''Common Arrangement of Work Sections'' (CAWS), first published in 1987, is a
construction industry working convention in the
UK. It was designed to promote standardisation of, and detailed coordination between,
bills of quantities and
specifications. It is part of an industry-wide initiative to produce coordinated projects information (now managed by the
Construction Project Information Committee
The Construction Project Information Committee is an advisory group, comprising representatives of major UK construction industry institutions, which provides best practice guidance on the content, form and preparation of construction producti ...
). CAWS has been used for the arrangement of the
National Building Specification
NBS (National Building Specification) is a UK-based business providing construction specification information used by architects, engineers and other building professionals to describe the materials, standards and workmanship of a construction pro ...
, the ''National Engineering Specification and the Standard Method of Building Works'' (7th ed).
The new edition aligns CAWS with the Unified Classification for the Construction Industry (
Uniclass ''Uniclass 2015'' is a unified classification system for all sectors of the UK construction industry. It contains consistent tables classifying items of all scales, from entire systems such as a railway to individual product items such as anchor p ...
) which was published in 1997.
The Common Arrangement is the authoritative UK classification of work sections for building work, for use in arranging project specifications and bills of quantities. Over 300 work sections are defined in detail to give:
* good coordination between drawings, specifications and bills of quantities
* predictability of location of relevant information
* fewer oversights and discrepancies between documents
* flexibility to the contractor in dividing the project information into work packages.
The classification of work sections is separate from, and complementary to, the classification of other concepts such as building types, elements, construction products and properties/characteristics. Uniclass, published in 1997, is the definitive overall classification tables, one of which is for work sections for buildings, comprising the Common Arrangement group, sub-group and work section headings.
External links
NBS
Civil engineering
Construction industry of the United Kingdom
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