That is a great question and one I get asked often. I guess you’d expect me to say that you should update your masters every year. Guilty! However, things will change in 2018.
In the past, many of our customers chose to purchase their specifications new one year and then skip updating the documents for the next two years, and then purchase new again in the third year. That is because they believed the update pricing to be too expensive: they reasoned that by updating every year they would have had to pay more for updates than the new cost by the third year. By doing this, they were willing to accept the risk of using outdated specifications for the intervening years.
All the players involved in publishing the NMS, both the NRC authoring group and licensees, recognise the value of making it easier to keep your NMS update to date. That is why update pricing will decrease in 2018! It will become more cost-effective for your firm to keep its master specification up-to-date, now that it can be updated annually, and make it easier for your consultants to keep in touch with the latest in construction technology.
I welcome cost reduction of updates – it’s welcome news that someone realized the cost of updates in relation to a new subscription.