The AEC community has been shaken by recent changes made to an industry-wide, volunteer-driven platform for commercial construction specifications. In early February, construction specifiers discovered the nonprofit Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) published dramatic increases in licensing fees for its MasterFormat product on their website.

This significant shift caught architects, contractors, engineers, and other users across the United States and Canada by surprise. The decision was met with shock, confusion, and anger by many, especially on message boards focused on building specs.

Traditionally, MasterFormat has functioned as a taxonomy, a Dewey Decimal system for construction specifications that was first put together in 1963 to help organize the boom in new postwar building materials. The volunteer-driven organization helps create a massive book–or digital PDF–that contains a series of six-digit codes that define different construction items or materials, such as cast-in-place concrete, wall panel, or brick masonry products. Architects, contractors, engineers, and all other players in the process of constructing a building utilize these codes to coordinate across a project lifecycle. It’s especially valuable to architects because most government building contracts require the use of MasterFormat specs, making it a prerequisite for such work.

During an event at the Master Specifiers Retreat, hosted by the CSI in Colorado Springs, Colorado, from February 11 to 13, CSI staff officially announced the changes. David Stutzman, an event attendee and owner and founder of Conspectus, a specifications consulting firm, said the shift reeked of “profiteering.”

“Everybody was so outraged because it just didn’t make any sense,” said Juste Fanou, owner of Toronto-based JMF Technical Documentation Solutions, about the change.

Historically, a firm would pay less than $200 every few years for an updated copy of these standards. The last physically published edition of MasterFormat was in 2020, while the latest version of the framework is MasterFormat® 2026.

However, per February’s announcement, the price of access will increase substantially. Instead of a single, semi-annual purchase of an individual license to use MasterFormat, architects and others will be charged an annual fee for a software subscription to use CSI Dynamic Standards, which is a digitized version of the standards that will be updated more frequently. (Fanou called it a “glorified control-F”).

The fee would also be charged on a sliding scale based on firm income. Instead of a mid-size firm paying under $200 for a shared book every few years, the base price would be $699 annually and could potentially expand to thousands of dollars a year based on the firm’s annual income. Conspectus, for example, might need to pay $4,400, according to an estimate from the new CSI site, a “significant, unanticipated expense,” said Stutzman.

Unbeknownst to many attendees, the nonprofit CSI had sold a majority controlling share to CIN, a software developer, which would gain the right to grant licenses for MasterFormat specifications. The CEO of CIN, Chris Anderson, was previously named head of AIA Contracts Documents when AIA sold it to a private equity company in 2020 and turned into a subscription service. The move follows other software companies, like Adobe, which have moved from per-product purchases to annual or monthly subscription fees.

Detractors point out that the move is especially egregious because MasterFormat is licensing a bank of information contributed by its extensive community of industry volunteers, many of whom have expressed outrage with this new development. It’s important to note that while MasterFormat provides a shared organization system, it is these volunteer specification writers who create project-specific details for every entry, such as the exact ingredients needed for cast-in-place concrete.

“No one really voted on giving the licensor I don’t know how many millions of dollars of annual revenue for having done nothing to generate the standard,” said architect Amy Baker, who runs her eponymous architecture firm in Royal Oak, Michigan.

“Members are pretty passionate about the organization,” said Stutzman, who has contributed as a volunteer specification writer since 1992. “They’re passionate about trying to improve the industry, that’s why they volunteer.”

CSI Marketing did not respond to multiple attempts to reach out for comment for this story.

Making the shift even more awkward and confusing, CSI has repeatedly changed the language and pricing structure on their website in recent months in response to the backlash, softening statements that suggested a need to purchase to phrases like “empowers professionals.”

Stutzman said he’s heard of smaller firms getting letters asking them to pay the increased licensing fee, but it’s not uniformly being enforced, nor is there any date for compliance.

Stutzman and Baker are part of a group of architects and MasterFormat users that are informally meeting and trying to figure out what to do about this industry shift. They are demanding to see the contract CSI signed and evidence of how the board, and who on the board, made this decision. Stutzman has already declined opportunities to volunteer again for MasterFormat; he refuses to give an hour of his free time to a for-profit enterprise.

“I liken it to my own business,” he said. “Folks have a choice. CSI at this point is saying there’s no choice. Well, there’s even been talk of people creating a brand new system.”

Patrick Sisson is an L.A.-based writer and reporter focused on the trends, tech, and design behind cities today.