Historic Preservation Technical Procedures

Technical Procedures Overview
GSA’s Technical Procedures are an online library of specifications and standards for repair and maintenance of historic building materials. Information in the procedures has been obtained from GSA specifications for historic building projects, National Park Service specifications, and other sources concerned with the care of historic buildings. The goal of these procedures is avoid inadvertent damage to historic materials and to extend their useful life. The procedures cover many aspects of materials preservation, responding to hundreds of problems commonly encountered in GSA historic building projects and inspections. Individual deficiencies listed in GSA’s Building Preservation Plans reference relevant technical procedures. The procedures are indexed according to the 16 divisions of the Construction Specifications Institute (CSI). The database is also searchable by keywords in the procedure’s titles or text. Prior to inclusion in GSA’s library of procedures, documents are reviewed by one or more qualified preservation specialists for general consistency with the Secretary of Interior Standards for rehabilitating historic buildings as understood at the time the procedure is added to the library. All specifications require project-specific editing and professional judgement regarding the applicability of a procedure to a particular building, project or location. References to products and suppliers are to serve as a general guideline and do not constitute a federal endorsement or determination that a product or method is the best or most current alternative, remains available, or is compliant with current environmental regulations and safety standards. The library of procedures is intended to serve as a resource, not a substitute, for specification development by a qualified preservation professional.

Rewrite
Technical procedures provide specifications and standards for repair and maintenance of historic building materials. The procedures cover many aspects of materials preservation, commonly encountered in historic building projects and inspections. The goal of these procedures is to avoid inadvertent damage to historic materials and extend their useful life. Procedures have been obtained from a variety of federal and other sources concerned with the care of historic buildings and are indexed according to the 16 divisions defined by the Construction Specifications Institute’s MasterFormat.

Disclaimer
We’ve reviewed the procedures for general consistency with federal standards and provide them only as a reference. Specifications should only be applied under the guidance of a qualified preservation professional who can assess the applicability of a procedure to a particular building, project or location. References to products and suppliers serve as general guidelines and do not constitute a federal endorsement nor a determination that a product or method is the best alternative or compliant with current environmental regulations and safety standards.