The hard questions about specifications written in Avoice

The practice that issues the spec, exactly as today. When a graduate drafts a clause wrongly and a senior misses it, the liability sits with the practice, not the graduate or the software they used. Avoice is the drafter. A qualified person still reviews, edits and issues.

Avoice never issues anything on its own. Like every spec software provider, it doesn't take on professional liability for the content you issue.

It helps to be clear about what technical authors at a spec publisher actually do. They watch for changes to British Standards, the Building Regulations and contract forms, and update a generic clause library to match: the standards each clause cites, the options it offers, the guidance notes and the generic workmanship clauses.

They never see your project. Turning that library into the specification for a particular building has always been the architect's job, and the architect has always been the author of record.

Avoice does each of those jobs too, line for line, and in several places with more information: the full regulations rather than a summary, the contract on the project rather than a standard form, and your own drawings. Then it does the part a library never did: it writes the specification for your actual building, and the architect reviews and signs it off as author of record.

You don't have to change your view to test it. Treat Avoice like a new graduate whose work you haven't seen yet. Give it one live project, review its draft the way you would theirs, and keep your current process running alongside.

Better still, turn your objections into the test. Decide up front what would convince you: source accuracy against your own spot-checks, whether it missed anything your master would have caught, and how long the review took. If it fails, you've lost nothing.

If you'd rather not let it write anything yet, start with checking instead. Run a spec you've already issued through Avoice and see what it finds.

That's a fair experience to have. AI can get things wrong, and anyone who tells you otherwise isn't being straight with you. Before deciding it can't be trusted, it's worth asking a few questions about how it was tested.

1. When did you last try it? If it was when ChatGPT first came out, or even a year ago, you were using a very different tool. AI models are improving in months, not years. We're used to software that changes a little every year or so. AI changes in weeks, and that takes some getting used to.

2. Which plan and which model? With most software, the free version is the paid version with fewer features. With AI, they can be completely different. Even within one provider such as Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini, the smaller, cheaper models and the most capable ones give very different answers to the same hard question.

3. How was it set up? A general chatbot answering from memory is not the same as AI given your drawings, the regulations and your office master, with tools built to check its own work. Most of what makes AI reliable for specifications is in that setup, not in the model alone.

4. Who ran the test? This one is worth asking gently, because it applies to all of us. Getting good results from AI is a skill, and like any skill it takes time to learn. The same tool can look unreliable to someone trying it for the first time and transform the work of someone who uses it every day. The difference is usually in how it was asked, what it was given to work from, and whether its answers were checked against its sources.

Architects know this feeling from the other side. Most have had a client, a neighbour or a relative look at a drawing and say the building will fall down, or that the design is wrong. The concern may be sincere, but it isn't the same as a structural engineer's judgement, and nobody would change a design on the strength of it. A judgement about AI works the same way. It carries most weight when it comes from someone who has spent real time with the tools.

So it's fair to ask: did the person who tested it use AI regularly? Did they choose the right model, give it the right information, and know how to push back when an answer looked wrong? If not, the test may say more about the setup than about the AI. None of this means the concerns were wrong. It means the test is worth running again with someone experienced, and we're happy to be that someone on one of your own projects.

The quickest way to settle it is to try it yourself. Even before you look at Avoice, take out a paid plan with one of the main providers, usually around £20 a month, choose its most capable model, and ask it something difficult from your own work.

Technical directors are paid to be cautious, and that's a good thing. Test thoroughly and look at every option. Just don't judge today's AI by what it could do a year ago, or by how quickly other technology has changed in the past. Nothing has moved this fast before.

That's how most people feel at first, and it's completely normal. Avoice changes how a spec gets written, not just how fast, so it takes a little time to click.

Just send us an email at hello@avoice.co. We'll book a session and start with one section on one of your live projects, ideally something you know well, like internal partitions or floor finishes. We'll go through it slowly with you: how the draft was written, where each clause came from, what's still open, and how you'd review and edit it.

Between sessions, a few things help it sink in:

Ask the spec questions. Why did it choose that value? Where did that clause come from? What's still to decide? Seeing how it answers is the quickest way to understand how it works.
Check something you've already issued. Run a spec you know inside out through Avoice and see what it finds.
Use AI for small things every day. The more you use it, even for simple questions, the more natural it becomes.

At the end of the day, though, none of it will fully make sense until you try it yourself.

No. Avoice proposes and you decide. Whether the trigger is a new consultant report, a drawing revision or a client change, every edit arrives as a proposed change showing exactly what would change and why. Nothing goes into the spec until someone accepts it.

No. Every empty field ends up in one of three states:

From the product. Filled from the manufacturer's published data, with the source and a note to double-check shown on hover.
Recommended. A value based on the Building Regulations, British Standards or trade practice, with the reasoning and other options you could pick.
TBC. It genuinely can't be determined from what you've given it, and the reason is stated.

Avoice is a flat monthly licence for the practice, priced by team size, with a spec-only plan and a full suite. Larger practices get a quote based on headcount and what they need. See pricing.

Yes, and it's one of the most useful things it does. AI is good at reading a long document closely and comparing it against other documents, which is exactly what checking a specification involves.

It checks your work. Give Avoice a spec your team wrote and it reviews it against your drawings and schedules, flagging contradictions, broken references, leftover clauses and open TBCs.

It checks its own work. Every draft Avoice writes is checked against the drawings and its sources before you see it, and anything it can't confirm is marked for you to check.

You can check it with another AI. If you want a second opinion, paste a clause into another AI tool and ask it to find problems. Using one AI to check another is a quick, cheap way to build confidence, much like asking a colleague to look over a draft.

Yes. Avoice can review a spec your team wrote against your drawings and schedules, and flag contradictions, broken references, leftover clauses and open TBCs. Many practices start there before they let it draft.

Yes, like any drafter. Two things make it easier to catch. Every clause shows its source, so a claim with a weak source stands out. And where Avoice isn't sure, it marks the item to double-check instead of writing it with confidence.

Spot-check clauses that rest on general good practice rather than your project documents, and any clause that hinges on a specific number.

In our 2026 study, the current model averaged 97 out of 100 on our Specification Quality Index across three test briefs, against 66 for our previous model, graded with the same rubric we used on real issued UK specs. That's our own test, and the 2027 edition will be independently graded. Read the study.

The better evidence is your own spec. Bring one to a demo.

Drafts can improve as the model improves, so regenerating a section may word it differently. Issued revisions never change. Each issue is kept exactly as it went out, with its revision and date.

Yes. Reviewing a structured draft that shows its sources is much faster than researching and writing from scratch. A typical Stage 4 first draft takes around 2 hours instead of 20. The review time on top is time you'd spend on anyone's draft.

They're yours. Specs, libraries and documents can be exported at any time, and every issued revision is an ordinary document you keep. Avoice is backed by Y Combinator.

Avoice does, every day. Every standard is tracked by number, edition and withdrawal status, checked against more than 1,200 sources, alongside the Building Regulations and manufacturer product data. When something is superseded or withdrawn, Avoice shows the exact live projects and clauses it touches, so the change can be accepted or amended there and then, with an audit trail.

A record of what was current is also saved every time a spec is issued, so you can always show which edition a clause was written to.

From the published sources a technical author works from, plus the information about your project that a library never has:

Regulations: the full Building Regulations library, tracked by edition and amendment.
Standards: British Standards cited by reference, with the current edition checked.
Preliminaries: your practice's own preliminaries, and the form of contract on the project.
Your practice: your office master and house rules.
The project: your drawings, schedules and consultant reports.

Before it writes workmanship clauses, Avoice works through a completeness checklist for that type of work, so nothing a clause of that kind should cover is missed.

Yes. Every clause is sourceable. It links to the drawing, schedule, report, regulation or standard behind it, so a reviewer can follow the reasoning instead of taking the wording on trust. Where nothing in the project supports a value, the clause says so with a TBC and the reason, instead of filling the gap with a plausible guess.

Your practice, as it always has been. Avoice drafts, and a qualified person reviews, edits and issues. That is the same position as with any spec software: the tool provides content, and the architect is the author of record.

You're told the same day, on every live project it affects, with the clauses involved. You review and update the references, or push a substitution, in one go. Nothing is changed for you, and issued revisions keep what was current when they went out.

Yes. Every section keeps its version history: what changed, who changed it and when. You can restore an earlier version of a section.

The test is your review, not the software. Issuing any draft unread, whether it came from a template, a past project or an AI, is hard to defend. A documented review is what holds up.

Avoice makes that review easier to do and to show. Every clause traces back to the drawing, report or standard behind it. Anything unresolved stays visibly flagged instead of being buried in prose. The spec is checked against the drawings before issue. A clause-level record shows who reviewed and accepted each change.

Standard UK architects' PI covers errors in specifications whatever tool produced the first draft, and AI-assisted drafting isn't on the usual UK exclusion lists today. Insurers are starting to ask at renewal which tools you use and whether outputs are reviewed before issue.

Check your schedule and endorsements for any AI wording, and ask your broker in writing. We can't confirm your cover for you. Avoice carries its own professional indemnity, cyber and AI cover.

Deleting from a full template fails in a different way. You get clauses nobody removed, references to things that aren't on the project, and sections that contradict each other. In our review of around 50 real UK specifications, those were among the most common defects still present at contract issue. Read the State of UK Specifications 2026.

Avoice starts from your office master where you have one, and builds each section from what the project needs. Every clause should be able to answer why it's in this spec. Where scope looks missing against the outline, Avoice flags it for you to decide.

It's a fair worry. Deleting boilerplate you don't understand doesn't teach anyone either.

In Avoice every clause comes with guidance written for that project: what's missing, what needs deciding, and what to watch for. Anyone can ask a clause why it says what it says and where it came from. The reviewer still owns the outcome, so the review conversation between junior and senior stays where it was.

No. It removes the blank page and the re-typing. A typical Stage 4 first draft goes from around 20 hours to around 2, and your spec writer spends that time reviewing, deciding and coordinating instead.

A very long list, and it grows all the time. Alongside British Standards and the Building Regulations, Avoice references guidance from trade and standards bodies across the industry, for example CWCT for facades and ASFP for fire protection. If you'd like the full list, email us at hello@avoice.co and we'll send it over.

We reference, we don't reproduce. Standards and trade guidance are copyright of the bodies that publish them, so Avoice cites them by name and edition rather than copying their text into your spec. If your practice holds its own licensed copies, you can upload them so Avoice works from the exact clauses you use.

You choose which ones apply. Every practice works differently. One firm relies on a particular trade body's guidance for every facade job, another never uses it. In your Clause Library you switch on the standards bodies your practice works to, and Avoice only references those.

They're kept current. The editions Avoice cites are tracked, and any live spec citing a superseded or withdrawn edition is flagged.

From the same places an experienced spec writer draws on: the BS 8000 workmanship series and other codes of practice, the Building Regulations and Approved Documents, and manufacturer installation instructions where they're published.

Where a clause rests on general good practice rather than project information, the clause says so, so you know what to check.

No. British Standards are cited by reference, with the current edition checked and a flag when one is superseded or withdrawn. Avoice doesn't publish or copy their text. If your practice holds licensed copies, you can upload them so Avoice works from the exact clauses you're licensed to use.

As with any draft, check clauses that hinge on a specific number in a standard.

On purpose. A TBC means your drawings and reports don't resolve that item yet. It's better to see it now than to find it on site. Open TBCs collect in a per-project TBC register that you clear before issue.

Yes. Each clause links back to the drawing, report or standard it came from, and you can ask any clause why this thickness, this product or this standard. Products you've scheduled take priority over what the drawings show, and any default Avoice chooses comes with its reason.

Every day. Avoice runs a daily sweep of the regulations, standards editions and manufacturer product data it draws on, so an amendment, a superseded standard or a withdrawn product is picked up within a day and flagged on every live project it affects. That makes it one of the fastest-updating spec libraries a practice can use.

The product moves just as quickly. Improvements ship every week, not once a year.

Usually within days, often the same day. Practices regularly flag something in the morning and see it sorted by the afternoon.

Avoice doesn't pick a side quietly. The discrepancy shows against the clause with both sources named, and the architect decides which one stands.

Clauses carry Building Regulations findings against the Approved Documents, and fire classifications cite their test standard, for example reaction to fire to BS EN 13501-1. Give it your fire strategy report and it writes to it.

It doesn't replace your fire engineer or the fire strategy. Where the strategy is silent on something the spec needs, Avoice flags the gap instead of filling it.

Yes. Avoice covers England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and Ireland too. Specs are checked against the regulations that apply where the project is.

Yes. Add acoustic, fire, structural or building services reports, new drawings, product selections or client changes. Avoice pulls out what matters, places it in the right sections and shows you each change to accept.

It writes from what you give it, so surveys, condition reports and heritage statements go in as sources alongside the drawings. For traditional work your own office master sets the wording and the methods.

Less than most people expect. The most detailed published figures are per prompt. Google measured its median Gemini text prompt at about 0.24 Wh of electricity, 0.03 g of CO2e and 0.26 mL of water (August 2025). OpenAI puts an average ChatGPT query at about 0.34 Wh and roughly a third of a millilitre of water (June 2025).

Drafting a spec takes many prompts, not one. A typical Stage 4 first draft in Avoice uses about [X] prompts, roughly [Y] Wh of electricity and [Z] mL of water.

Probably not. A first draft written by hand takes around 20 hours at a workstation, and a desktop with two screens draws around 100 W or more. The 18 or so hours Avoice saves come to roughly 2 kWh, which at the published rates above is several thousand prompts. Unless a draft needs more prompts than that, the AI uses less electricity than the computer time it saves.

Yes. Upload your office master, past project specs, preliminaries and templates. They become the starting point for every new spec, and your house rules are applied while the spec is drafted rather than checked at the end.

Your master is used only inside your practice's workspace. It's never used to write specs for other firms.

Master clauses are versioned, so you can see what changed and when, and a correction to a master clause carries into every new spec. Changes to the master can be locked to named people and approved before they go live.

House rules such as preferred products, banned terms and wording conventions are applied as each spec is written, whoever is writing it. A practice-wide view shows how carefully each team is reviewing: fast accepts, open TBCs at issue, and departures from your standards.

Every open TBC, discrepancy and unchecked item stays visible on its section, so it's obvious what nobody has looked at. You can also require each section to be reviewed before the spec can be issued, and see who accepted what.

Yes. Set up your own review criteria once and run them on every drawing and spec review, so the checks you'd do yourself happen on every job.

Your choice. A house rule such as "no proprietary names in systems clauses" keeps it performance-led. Where you've selected a product, it names that product.

No. Manufacturers can't pay for placement. Recommendations start from your practice's preferred products, then what best meets the clause's requirements.

Yes. Draft from a client's outline and keep their codes in the clause headers, so the spec matches the codes on the drawings.

Like yours. Practice Voice learns your wording from sections you've already issued and applies your rules, for example "shall" instead of "must", or "or equivalent approved" in place of "or equal approved".

CAWS and Uniclass 2015, the two used in the UK. You can switch the clause references between them.

Avoice uses the standard CAWS library number wherever one fits. Only when the library genuinely has nothing does it add a new number, placed in the correct part of the section. Variants of a clause follow their parent in sequence, or take a decimal (for example 319.1) where the next number is already taken.

Yes. You choose one of three settings: match the codes on your drawings, let Avoice assign product codes, or show the classification reference only. The clause reference is always shown either way.

It's linked. Edit it once and it updates everywhere it's used. You can still vary it for one section if you need to.

No. Clauses describe conditions by room type and use, and refer to drawing series generically. Your drawings and schedules say which rooms. The one exception is execution clauses that point to a specific junction detail.

Each section carries its design responsibility marker, such as P for prescriptive or D for contractor's design, shown on the section itself so it's clear before anyone reads the clauses.

No. If it's in the schedule, it isn't written again in the spec, so nothing has to be edited twice. The spec covers what the schedule can't.

Approve a product substitution once and the clause, the schedules and the product register update together. Each section keeps its version history, and you issue the change as a new revision.

Yes. Before issue, clauses are cross-checked against your drawings and product data. Conflicts, missing details and broken references are flagged while there's still time to fix them.

Yes. There are plugins for both, plus IFC. Clauses, model objects and keynotes stay linked, so a change on one side shows on the other.

Yes. Avoice writes building services and structural specifications as well as architectural ones.

Yes. Preliminaries have to match the form of contract on the project, whether that's JCT, NEC, a RIBA building contract or a client's bespoke contract. Upload your own licensed copy and Avoice reads the particulars and drafts the contract-specific preliminaries to match. Avoice doesn't supply the contract forms themselves, so you use the copy your practice already holds.

Yes. Each section carries a design responsibility marker, so contractor-designed portions are written as performance requirements with the submittals the contractor owes you, while the parts you design stay prescriptive.

Yes. Scottish building contracts and Irish forms, including public works contracts, are handled the same way: upload your copy and the preliminaries follow it.

Yes. Once the contract is on the project, instructions and certificates reference the right clauses of that contract.

Yes. Your clauses, preliminaries and house style come with you. Most practices run Avoice alongside their current software on one live project first and compare the output before switching.

If you're paying for spec software now, you can get up to 12 months of Avoice free on an annual plan. See the conditions.

Preliminaries sit in their own volume, built from your practice's preliminaries template. Contract-specific preliminaries are covered under forms of contract below.

Yes. Your specs, libraries and documents are yours and can be exported at any time as Word or PDF.

Yes. Issue the spec from the publication library and share it as a live link, with an optional password. Viewers are free and don't take up a seat.

Yes. Most practices start on one live project and compare the result with how they work now. Larger practices run a time-boxed pilot with an agreed decision date.

You send us your firm details, sample drawings, specs and templates through a short onboarding form. We set up your files and product library first, then your first project. Most practices are drafting on a live project within the first week.

Yes. Pay by card or invoice, monthly or annually. An annual plan is also how the switching offer works for practices leaving their current spec software.

Yes. Your team works in one spec, with each person's changes kept in the section history. Several people can edit different sections at the same time.

Yes. Upload your practice template and exports use your styles, headers and cover page.

Yes. Start from your practice library or a ready-made outline, and Avoice writes an outline specification you develop into the full spec at Stage 4, using the same clause codes throughout.

Yes. Upload the spec you have so far along with the drawings and reports, and carry on from there. You don't need to start the project again.

No installation. Avoice runs in the browser on Mac and Windows. The Revit and Archicad plugins are optional extras for teams who want the model linked.

Your account manager, who is based in the UK. You can also message us from inside Avoice or use the help centre at help.avoice.co.

Yes. We run lunch and learn sessions for practices: a short talk on AI in specification writing with time for your team's questions. Book a lunch and learn.

Yes. Large drawing sets are read in full. The Z reference sections that other sections point to, such as fixings, mortars, sealants and powder coatings, are written and kept in step with the sections that cite them.

Both. Avoice reads your existing schedules and can create and issue them as part of the spec, with the clauses and schedules linked so a change in one shows in the other.

Ask the spec where a query is answered and get the clause back. Make the change, and issue it as a new revision so the addendum is dated and traceable. Avoice lists what changed since the last issue.

Consultants can view and comment for free. An engineer with a seat can also write their own sections inside your spec, so building services and structure sit in one coordinated document.

Open the section and work through the Context panel: anything marked Check or TBC, and the guidance for each clause. Every change is in the section history. Leave comments on a clause for the author to pick up.

Traditional spec software gives you a library of clauses to pick from and edit by hand. Avoice reads your drawings, schedules and reports, writes the draft, checks it against the drawings before issue, shows where every clause came from, and updates daily when products and standards change.

More than 250 practices and in-house design teams, from sole practitioners to multi-studio firms and client-side teams at hotel groups. Ask us for a reference practice similar to yours.

Issued revisions are ordinary documents you keep, so nothing already issued depends on Avoice being online. Enterprise plans include a 99.5% uptime commitment with service credits.

Your practice. Under our terms, specs and documents you create in Avoice, including text Avoice drafts for you, belong to you.

Your own clauses and house wording are yours to bring. If your master includes text licensed from your current supplier, check that licence first, and we'll help you separate what's yours from what's theirs.

Yes, where the licence allows. Approved Documents and other government material are published under the Open Government Licence, so Avoice shows them in full with attribution. Material from standards bodies and other publishers is cited by reference only.

Yes. Product values come from manufacturers' published data, which exists so specifiers can use it, and each value shows the source it came from.

No. Your office master and project documents are used only within your workspace. Our model providers work under zero-retention terms.

In the UK, on AWS UK, on every plan including trials.

Cyber Essentials Plus, an independent penetration test with every finding fixed, and a UK GDPR data processing agreement. A SOC 2 Type II audit is under way.