The term performance-based is commonly used to describe codes and standards that seek to define the purpose and scope of a building system, without specifically prescribing its details. Performance-based specifying pushes the concept a step further, using it to describe the nature of the actual specification that an engineer writes. "The difference between [performance-based] codes and specifying is that codes refer to the regulatory part," says Jon Traw, P.E, president of the International Conference of Building Officials. "Specifying is outside the regulatory. It's an owner-builder-supplier relationship." In fact, a project design could, for example, rely on performance-based design without using performance specifications. "You could have a project with performance-based design, but just standard prescriptive specs," explains Dan Gemeny, P.E., a vice president at The RJA Group's Los Angeles office. "We tend to write performance specs for fire systems. But in the fire alarm industry, it's not atypical for system vendors to go to the engineering house and sell their equipment. In fact, it's typically a proprietary spec," says the consultant.
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