AI for tile and stone distributors, tested on commercial projects you already quoted.

Every closed spec job keeps its answer. Your desk turned a finish schedule and a Division 09 tiling section into a quote, and later into a submittal the architect stamped or returned. Both still sit beside the documents they came from, so each draft can be scored against what your team actually did.

The standards behind the section keep moving. TCNA's standards page, as posted in September 2026, carries ANSI A137.1, the ceramic tile specification, at its 2022 edition and marks A137.3, for gauged porcelain tiles and panels, as not current while a new edition is prepared. Two new documents are in draft: A118.20 for uncoupling membranes, and A128.1 for the dimensional stability of agglomerate, natural stone and non-ceramic specialty tiles. A section carried forward from an older building can cite editions that have since moved, and a person decides what follows.

Porcelain is a word with a mark behind it. TCNA and the Ceramic Tile Distributors Association launched the Porcelain Tile Certification Agency to certify porcelain tile, and qualifying makers may print its mark on their packaging. New York State's master tiling section offers designers an optional line requiring agency-certified tile, and its editor's note warns that not all tile called porcelain meets the porcelain requirements of A137.1.

Stone has its own standards and its own association. The Natural Stone Institute took shape in 2018 when the Marble Institute of America and the Building Stone Institute combined, and the National Building Granite Quarriers Association, founded in 1916, joined in 2021; New York's stone flooring section still lists the older marble and granite groups among its abbreviations. The institute's ASTM page gives each stone a material specification of its own, C503 for marble, C615 for granite, C568 for limestone, C629 for slate and C1527 for travertine, so a stone line is read against a different document than the tile beside it.

Imported tile can sit under a federal order. Commerce's antidumping and countervailing duty orders on ceramic tile from China, published June 1, 2020, were continued after their first five-year reviews, applicable February 20, 2026. The scope covers flooring, wall, paving, hearth, porcelain and mosaic tile under 3.2 centimeters thick, glazed or not and whatever its absorption or vitrification, plus slabs and panels over a square meter and tile given minor processing in a third country; the written description, not the tariff code, decides. Rulings on single products can turn: a composite tile ruled inside the orders in January 2023 was ruled outside them, applicable October 30, 2025, after the Court of International Trade sent the ruling back twice. Whether an order reaches a line is for your import team and counsel, and none of this is legal advice.

Slip resistance comes from the owner's section. The Access Board's guide to the ADA Standards says accessible floors must be stable, firm and slip resistant but sets no minimum coefficient of friction, since no widely accepted test method has emerged. Any slip figure on a tile type is the owner's or a product standard's, and the drafts carry it as written; this summary is not code advice. Neither job prices a line, picks a substitute, judges a test result or approves a product, and both stay on copies, away from your ordering system, a contractor's portal and any live quote or submittal. A salesperson or project coordinator makes every call and sends every document.