''Common Arrangement of Work Sections'' (CAWS), first published in 1987, is a

construction Construction is a general term meaning the art and science to form objects, systems, or organizations,"Construction" def. 1.a. 1.b. and 1.c. ''Oxford English Dictionary'' Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0) Oxford University Press 2009 and ...

industry working convention in the UK. It was designed to promote standardisation of, and detailed coordination between,

bills of quantities A bill of quantities is a document used in tendering in the construction industry in which materials, parts, and labor (and their costs) are itemized. It also (ideally) details the terms and conditions of the construction or repair contract and ite ...

and

specifications A specification often refers to a set of documented requirements to be satisfied by a material, design, product, or service. A specification is often a type of technical standard. There are different types of technical or engineering specificati ...

. 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 productio ...

). 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 pla ...

) 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 {{Engineering-book-stub