Study of Top 500 Design Firms' Plans to Adopt MasterFormatTM 2004

In 2004, the Construction Specification Institute released an update of MasterFormatTM 2004. This was a complete overhaul of the 1995 version of MasterFormatTM, which enjoyed widespread industry support. One of the major changes was increasing the number of divisions from 16 to 50 in order to be more inclusive of not only building projects, but also of civil and industrial projects. In addition, the new version increased the numbering system from 5 digits to 6 digits, allowing designers to be more descriptive in their specifications. Because previous versions of MasterFormatTM have been the industry standard for so many years, this research was conducted to determine if and when large design firms planned to adopt the new MasterFormatTM 2004. Two hundred of Engineering News Record's (ENR) Top 500 Design Firms were surveyed. The findings from this research show that approximately 75% of the firms currently using MasterFormatTM are planning to adopt the 2004 version and that 72% of these firms plan to adopt MasterFormatTM 2004 by the end of 2006.