Today's word processing software, which has a variety of powerful labor- and time- saving devices, will help users go a long way in automating the reformatting of content while maintaining consistency, including:

• Styles (a more complete way of applying formatting)
• Global search and replace
• Autotext (to automatically change words)
• Macros (sets of instructions that carry out commands automatically)
• Fields (special codes representing intelligent data about documents, such as footers and headers for automatically numbering pages or adding text identifying a specific project).

"If you're using the technology, it's going to be simple," says Toledo member Louise Schlatter, RA, CSC. She is architectural department manager and also a senior project architect at SSOE Inc. "For the primary users of MasterFormat in its previous versions, the change that they will have to make is extraordinarily small."

CSI member David E. Lorenzini, FMCS, CSC, SCIP, an independent construction specifier in Leesburg, V.A., agrees. "Most of the routines will be ‘search and replace' type things," he says.

Lorenzini suggests that another aid to a smooth transition is to develop, use, and keep current a master specifications template instead of going to a previous project's specs to start a new project. Templates are special documents that can contain styles, macros, and other automated features to provide a customized basis for new documents. The customized features and automated routines in a template are available to all documents. Making changes to a template means those changes only have to be done once. Lorenzini estimates the conversion for most specifiers will be about an 80-hour task.

In order to ensure a timely and orderly transition, Hall Architects along with many of Charlotte's architectural firms has been discussing the implementation process of MasterFormat 2004 for several months. Based on these discussions, the firm will officially adopt MasterFormat 2004 for all projects that start after June 1, 2005. All consultants will be required to provide work compliant with MasterFormat 2004 on projects after this date.