Furniture specifications checked line by line, before the order goes in.

The specification reaches your desk as a design tool's export, a spreadsheet, a PDF schedule or a marked-up floor plan, often with one typical workstation multiplied across a floor. Your specifier reads each line against the manufacturer's current price list and option rules, prices it on the account's contract, counts it against the plan, and then fixes what a designer can't see from the drawing.

For the test, AI reads copies of those files and drafts a check sheet for each order: the line, the problem, what the file says, and the source that shows why, whether a price list page, the contract or a plan sheet. Lines with nothing wrong are marked clean. No line gets changed and no order goes in. Your reviewer sets the sheet beside what your team changed before that order was placed, and beside anything that still came up on site.

The export is a stack of short codes. A SIF file, the plain-text format many specification tools write and dealer systems read, is a list of code and value lines. One published description of it starts each item at PN for product number, then PD for description, MC for a manufacturer code of up to five characters, TG for side mark, QT for quantity and PL for list price, with percentage fields for the sell and buy discounts. Options come as paired ON and OD lines. A chair's fabric, base and arm can each be a separate pair, and a line missing one can still price while describing nothing anyone can build. The check sheet reads the pairs together against the option guide, the way your specifier does.

A good specification says more than the part number. The University of Oregon's furniture standard asks for a coded furniture plan, a master product list and a sheet for each coded item giving quantity, manufacturer, part or model number and room numbers, with notes such as keying or a fabric stripe to be applied vertically. Upholstery has to state pattern number, fiber content, durability and light-fastness, and guest seating fabric needs at least 100,000 double rubs by the Wyzenbeek method or 75,000 Martindale cycles. Customer's own material, or COM, adds its own math: one manufacturer's terms list COM yardage for one chair on non-directional 54-inch goods and add more for any pattern repeat, and another wants the fabric tagged with the PO number and dealer name. The Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Authority's 2020 office furniture RFP had bidders confirm the manufacturer had tested and approved a material for the seat before bidding. The check sheet carries those notes onto each line and marks any a purchase order would lose.

One word, BIFMA, covers very different lines. ANSI/BIFMA X5.1 covers general-purpose office chairs, and its own scope says it does not address lounge seating, flammability, surface material durability, cushioning materials, product emissions or ergonomics. X5.4 is the title for public and lounge seating, X5.5 for desks and tables, X5.9 for storage units and X6.1 for educational seating. The University of Delaware's 2024 office furniture RFP said every item must meet or exceed BIFMA standards and named X5.1 for its chairs, which still leaves someone matching each line to the right title. Sustainability wording has the same trap: BIFMA separates LEVEL Certified, which a third party verifies, from an e3 conformance claim, which may be a first-party or second-party claim. The draft sets each requirement beside the evidence in your files and never says a product passes.

The catalog moves under the specification, and so does the price. North Carolina's furniture contract page records an addendum dated October 16, 2025 telling one awarded vendor to remove several product lines from its contract offerings, so a specification drawn from an older library can name what the contract no longer holds. Discounts have a structure of their own. Arkansas's contract SP-14-0094, on the holder's published sheet for 2020, had the dealer buy off a price list dated July 1, 2019 at its standard discount and sell to the State at percentages that stepped up with the order's list value, with each order marked State Contract and carrying a copy of the State PO. The check sheet names the price list date and the contract tier it used on every line, and marks lines on an old list or outside the contract.

Counts disagree more often than anyone wants. The City of Grand Junction, Colorado, issued an addendum to its community recreation center furniture RFP on November 7, 2025 correcting its quantity spreadsheet: one room's drawing showed four of a table the spreadsheet listed as two, a chair on the spreadsheet appeared on no plan, two chair quantities were flipped, and a 72-inch table sat where the drawing showed the 48-inch table that would fit. The University of Delaware's RFP shows the other half of a count: 156 sit-stand desks, each room assigned to a drawn layout of one to four desks, and 19 desks with no room at all, 8 stored on site and 11 shipped unassembled for offsite warehousing. So the draft rebuilds each quantity by room and typical, adds the units no room claims, and lists every difference with its sheet. Your reviewer, usually the specification manager or senior designer, scores every problem found, every one missed and every false alarm.

If your reviewer says yes against the success criteria, new specifications get the same check for about 30 days.

Your specifier approves every check sheet and makes each correction. Questions to a designer or a manufacturer still come from your team, and no purchase order goes out on the strength of a draft alone.

The fixed price for the live job is set before you sign. Any next job is chosen and priced on its own, and monthly support comes after that.