Glazing Editing and Proofreading Services

The glass goes in and the client stands in the car park looking at the façade. Some panes are slightly greener. There is a faint pattern in the reflection when the light is low, and one unit has a distortion running across it like a shallow wave. All of this is normal, all of it is within every relevant standard, and none of it was mentioned before the order — which is why it is now a complaint.

We edit what glazing contractors and glass processors produce — glass specifications and performance descriptions, visual quality and appearance expectation documents, sample and mock-up approval documentation, survey and tolerance records, structural and safety glass documentation, thermal and solar performance descriptions, installation method statements, warranty documentation and its exclusions, handover, cleaning and maintenance guidance, defect assessment and inspection reports, and client-facing explanations of what glass does. Our editors work on the expectations set before the order.

The appearance expectation document is what a glazing contractor either issues or wishes they had, and its absence is the source of most façade complaints. Every one of the phenomena that generate them — roller wave, anisotropy, colour variation between batches, external condensation, slight bow in a sealed unit on a cold day — is inherent to the product and invisible in a specification full of performance figures. We write these so each phenomenon is named in plain language and described as the client will actually see it, with the conditions under which it appears, since anisotropy explained as stress patterns visible in polarised light means nothing and "faint dark bands or blotches, mostly in low sun and through sunglasses" is recognisable; so the assessment conditions are stated — the distance, the angle, the lighting and whether the viewer is inside or out — because every glass standard is judged from a stated distance and clients judge from wherever they happen to stand; so what is and is not acceptable is illustrated by a sample or a photograph rather than described, given that no adjective settles a dispute about appearance; so the client is told these things before the order and asked to acknowledge them, as the same explanation after installation reads as an excuse; so anything genuinely avoidable is separated from the inherent, since a contractor who explains everything as normal loses the argument about the pane that actually is defective; and so the tolerance on survey and installation is stated in millimetres. Documents written this way turn a complaint into a conversation held six months earlier.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including specifications, surveys and client correspondence. We are editors rather than glazing or façade specialists, and we offer no view on glass performance, standards or acceptability. What we can do is set the expectation before the glass arrives.