Hope Spec

KYAMBOGO UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF ENGINEERING
DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL AND BUILDING ENGINEERING
BACHELORS OF ENGINEERING IN CIVIL AND BUILDING
ENGINEERING
SPECIFICATION WRITING ASSIGNMENT

ALIGANYIRA NELSON 18/U/ECD/19167/GV
QUESTION 1
Ambiguity
Ambiguity is when the specification written is having more than one meaning or intention
therefore causing confusion. The following are the types of ambiguity.
Lexical ambiguity
Lexical ambiguity refers to a word having several meaning. It can be divided into homonymy
and polysemy. Homonymy of a word occurs when the word has unrelated meanings and
different entomologies. For example bank
Polysemy of a word occurs when the word has several related meanings but one etymology.
Syntactic ambiguity
This is a type of ambiguity which occurs when a sequence of words has multiple valid
grammatical parsing. For example; ‘Quickly read and analyze the bid documents.’ We cannot be
sure whether they are the same documents to read and later discuss or not
Semantic ambiguity
Occurs when a sentence has more than one interpretation based entirely on the
surrounding context. Each word in the sentence has a distinct meaning and the sentence
has a single parse tree, but the correct interpretation of the sentence requires more context.
Vagueness
Occurs when a term or statement admits border-line cases or relative interpretation.:
Incompleteness. Occurs when a statement fails to provide enough information to have a
single clear interpretation.: “Provide certain engineers with the ability to adjust specifications
provided for the project.” In such a statement, the engineers who can adjust the specifications are
not distinct
Referential ambiguity
Occurs when a word or phrase in a sentence cannot be said to have a clear reference.
For example the trucks shall treat the roads before they freeze. The antecedent of the anaphor
they can be either trucks or roads. An anaphor cab refer also to a set of objects, a compound
object or a verb.
QUESTION 2
Challenges faced by specification writers
Guidelines bare minimum standards. This means that they may not have incentive to go above
and beyond with quality or safety. This limits the quality and safety to the minimum
requirements not giving room for improvement
Shortage of skills. The specification writers in their research find that skills required in the
execution of some of the specified guidelines may not be available in specific areas and
therefore find themselves conflicting against the guidelines to specify for the skills available
Where guidelines are enacted, they often do not reflect local realities. Most ppda guidelines are
based on models from specific locations in Uganda that are too complicated or not applicable to
the specific situations found in other areas like villages.
Some of the guidelines maybe too elaborate for simple projects. Most of the guidelines are based
on complicated projects which may be confusing to apply them on simple projects
Enforcement is a major problem in almost every case, whether urban, suburban, or rural. The
guidelines often are not enforced or are inadequately enforced because the inspection staff is too
small to meet the need, not well-trained, or, in some cases, bribed to ignore certain aspects of
construction. In many urban areas, zoning considerations are checked but full adherence to an
approved plan is lacking
Maintenance and workmanship are not necessarily impacted by guidelines. The guidelines have
little information about the maintenance activities and workmanship required. This usually
produces poor quality work
Political and special interest pressures usually play an active role in counteracting the objectives
of codes, some of the guidelines set may be influenced by political pressures which the
government agencies may allow to get support.
How the PPDA can address the above challenges
When designing and approving guidelines, the PPDA should ensure that the different guidelines
do not contradict at in any possible way. This will allow the specifier to refer to two or more
guidelines when designing his specifications.
A review team should be put in place to check applicability of different materials stated and
workmanships stipulated therein so as to exclude what’s outdated and include new methods that
meet current designs on the market.
The PPDA should provide improve their methods of information storage so that it is always
available for revision by specifiers. This improves the understanding of these guidelines by
specifiers and limits cases of misinterpretation and meanings of the guidelines.
Increase the specificity of the guidelines to include all materials on the market and numerous
construction methods available in the industry.
Design manuals can be formulated that include criteria that provides a wide range of options for
designing or specifying workmanships. This allows specifiers choose what is most suitable for
his design.
More effort should be invested in updating these guidelines on atleast an annual basis so that
they include most recent inventories in the industry. This will enable the guidelines meet the
current design intents because they will include materials that meet the specifier’s requirements.
REFERENCES
KIRBY, R. S. (1913). ELEMENTS OF SPECIFICATION WRITING .
ROSEN, H. J. (2011). CONSTRUCTION SPECIFICATIONS WRITING (6TH ed.).
STANDARD SPECIFICATIONS BUILDING WORKS AMENDED AUGUST 2012,

ABRAHAM BYANDALA

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KYAMBOGO UNIVERSITY

SPECIFICATION WRITING ASSIGNMENT

Challenges faced by specification writers

ROSEN, H. J. (2011). CONSTRUCTION SPECIFICATIONS WRITING (6TH ed.).

STANDARD SPECIFICATIONS BUILDING WORKS AMENDED AUGUST 2012,

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