I agree (to a certain extent; in my defense, I'm not in the trade, and it's not like I'm involved in this type of process frequently. About 95% of the processes we've been through was entirely new to us.
Furthermore, regarding items being poorly specified, I'm not sure how much more specific we could have been. Our architect, who is an award winner, provided extensive specifications and made efforts to communicate with the developer throughout the process. When the developer refused to work with our architect, we tried bringing in a (QS), but unfortunately, that route also failed. Yes, the quote being more clear is 100% on me; but when i put forward a QS breakdown; at quote level he refused to review and wanted to go off his working knowledge and 30+ years in the trade.
We should have been wiser and had dates and works scheudle/time-frames built into the contract - that is on me! (we was promised a works scheudle verbally but that never materialized)