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WHAT IS MASTERFORMAT?
The MasterFormat is a master list of numbers and titles organizing information about construction requirements, products, and standard sequence. MasterFormat facilitates standard filing and retrievals schemes throughout the construction industry. It is a uniform system for organizing information in project manuals, for organizing cost data, for filing product in other technical data, for identifying drawing objects and for presenting construction market data. MasterFormat also arranges related construction products and activities into a number of level one titles called Divisions. The latest version of the MasterFormat (1995) contains the familiar 16 Divisions. The MasterFormat is produced jointly by the Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) in the United States and Construction Specifications Canada (CSC).
WHAT IS NEW?
Plenty! Since its introduction in 1963, the MasterFormat has undergone numerous revisions and adjustments but has retained its basic 16 division structure - until now. For the past two years, a CSI/CSC MasterFormat Expansion Task Team (MFETT) has been working to develop a revised and expanded version of the MasterFormat. The Task Team was convened in April, 2001, and charged by the CSI Executive Committee with studying the need for expanding the subject matter coverage of MasterFormat and exploring possible solutions should a need for expansion of the standard be found. The Task Team started their work by creating the following set of guiding principles which the team has modified as necessary since inception of this work based on the needs expressed by users: