A customer's coating specification, read line by line against your technical data sheet.

The document might be an owner's Section 09 96 00, a state bridge item or a plant's internal coating standard. Someone reads it, pulls the data sheet for the product in question and works through generic type, film thickness per coat, cure and recoat times, surface preparation, VOC and the test methods it calls out.

In the test, AI reads copies of those specifications and data sheets and lays out each requirement, the data sheet line that speaks to it, and any requirement with no answer. It never says a product meets the specification. Nothing reaches a customer or a live data sheet, and what the reply says stays with your technical staff.

Generic type can come as a number, a chemistry or a list. The University of Houston's Section 09 96 00 calls coatings by MPI number, with inorganic zinc-rich primer as MPI #19 and gloss epoxy as MPI #77, and wants the current MPI Approved Products List printed with the proposed product highlighted. Indiana DOT's special provision 619-B-314 asks for a finish coat that is a two-component polyester or acrylic aliphatic polyurethane and an organic zinc primer to SSPC Paint Specification No. 20, Type II. Minnesota DOT's Spec 3520 describes whole systems, such as moisture-cure zinc-rich primer with a urethane intermediate, and points to its Approved Products List for bridge steel. The draft quotes the specification's words and your data sheet's words side by side.

Film thickness and recoat time can land back on your data sheet. Indiana gives each coat its own dry film thickness, read with a calibrated gauge under SSPC PA 2. Houston instead holds the film against the coating manufacturer's written recommendations. Minnesota's table lists pot life on one line and fills cure time for recoating with the words "per Manufacturer's Product Data Sheet." Your data sheet's range, and its minimum and maximum recoat times at each temperature, may be the requirement itself, so the draft names the data sheet revision it read.

Surface preparation and systems have their own traps. Houston lists SSPC-SP 11, Power Tool Cleaning to Bare Metal, SSPC-SP 6/NACE No. 3, Commercial Blast Cleaning, and SSPC-SP 5/NACE No. 1, White Metal Blast Cleaning, for steel, and uses SSPC-SP 7/NACE No. 4, Brush-Off Blast Cleaning, on concrete. It also bars application outside a temperature band, above a humidity ceiling or too near the dew point, each of which a data sheet states its own way. Houston wants one manufacturer for every coat, while Indiana's partial system lets primer and finish come from different makers and leaves compatibility to the contractor. The draft matches each designation and marks any gap for your technical lead.

A VOC number depends on how it was counted. EPA's architectural coatings rule works in grams per liter of coating thinned to the manufacturer's maximum recommendation, excluding water, exempt compounds and colorant added to a tint base. A label may show pounds per gallon, but compliance is judged in metric units. South Coast's Rule 1113 has a multi-component coating state its VOC after mixing. Indiana sets 336 grams per liter by ASTM D3960 for one finish coat, Minnesota prints its zinc primer limit in pounds per gallon with 420 grams per liter in brackets, and Houston lists 340 for zinc-rich primers under the federal subpart. An as-supplied figure may not answer any of those, so the draft records the basis beside each number.

Test methods, and what your reviewer watches. Indiana's finish coat calls out ASTM D2697 for volume solids, D2369 for total solids, D523 for gloss and D2805 for contrast ratio. A data sheet may quote another method or none, and those lines go on the list as open instead of being assumed. Your reviewer, usually a technical service manager or coatings engineer, checks that each requirement was caught, including ones buried in a schedule or addendum, that the right data sheet revision was read, and that a blank stayed a blank.

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

Your technical staff approve and sign every answer before a customer, contractor or engineer sees it, and whether a product fits stays their decision.

Anything further is its own decision, with its own price.