On the first day of the 2013 CSIA conference I will be presenting "21 Legal Takeaways in 45 Minutes," with each takeaway corresponding to a different chapter of my new book being published in mid-April by the ISA,
The Automation Legal Reference: A Guide to Legal Risk in the Automation, Robotics and Process Industries.
Between now and then, I am previewing all 21 of the takeaways in different forums. OK, this is
admittedly a bit on the promotional side, but it occurred to me today that this is also is an interesting way to look back at most of the things I have been speaking about at the CSIA Executive Conference for the past decade!
Today's (
Legal Takeaway #8) is right here in the Connected Community. It is the following:
Lack of clarity in automation specs usually serves no one . . . except the lawyers. While there are exceptions, the cost of unraveling, interpreting and disputing what a spec means is almost never worth the gain. In case you are interested, here are the rest of my rules for writing specs (as adapted for integrators):
- If possible, push performance responsibility to the other party.
- When that is not possible, push design responsibility to the other party.
- If neither of those works, try embedding an "alert me to any problems" obligation.
- Remove references to phrases such as "state of the art" and "free from defects." Not appropriate for software.
- Require an endpoint and cooperation from the end user in getting there.
- Define terms whenever applicable industry standards are not more favorable.
For the rest of the 21 Legal Takeaways, see my "tweets" on Twitter between now and the conference -- @automationlaw (hashtag #21takeaways).