AWI & AWS Standards Grade is not a label.

A grade, and everything the grade brings with it.

The specification names a grade, and that grade sets construction requirements, permitted materials and the tolerances the work is judged against. Changing grade is not a finish decision.

Surface exposure categories.

Exposed, semi-exposed and concealed surfaces carry different obligations on the same cabinet. A single unit can require three different substrate answers, and building all three to the exposed standard is a common and expensive habit.

Edge and joint quality.

Banding thickness, joint tolerance and the permitted gaps between a door and its frame, between adjacent doors, and between a drawer front and its opening.

Hardware specified to the level the grade expects.

At higher grades a function description is not enough. Manufacturer, model, load rating and finish are expected.

Testing, mock-up and sample obligations

where the specification imposes them. These carry real lead time as well as real cost.

This matters more than anything else on this page, so it is stated plainly.

AWI publishes the standard.

The Architectural Woodwork Institute defines what the grades require.

The fabricator carries the obligation.

Meeting the grade is the responsibility of the shop producing the woodwork, on the project the specification governs.

Quality programmes certify fabricators,

where a project requires one. That relationship is between the certifying body and the shop.

BluEnt detailing does neither.

We detail to the standard your project names and report what it requires. We do not issue compliance certification, we are not a certifying authority under any quality programme, and holding a grade is not something a detailing supplier can do on a fabricator's behalf.

What detailing can do is make the obligations visible on the drawing, so the reviewer can verify them and the shop can price them.

Grade read as description.

The most common failure by a distance. It appears in the specification, it reads like background, and it is priced as standard casework.

Exposure categories collapsed into one.

Every surface treated identically, which is either over-specification or a rejection depending on which way the error runs.

Substrate left open.

"As selected" on a drawing where the grade permits only certain answers.

Hardware called out by function.

Adequate at some grades, insufficient at others, and the difference is in the document.