Glossary

Construction runs on shorthand, and so does Teralo. This is both: the industry terms you will meet on a job, and the particular way Teralo uses them. Where an industry term does not name a screen in Teralo, the entry says what does.

Teralo's own words

Host. The organisation that owns and configures a project, usually the main contractor, developer or project manager. See Hosts and guests.

Guest. An organisation invited onto somebody else's project: a subcontractor, consultant or supplier. Guests lodge records and respond; they do not configure the project or approve.

Organisation. A company in Teralo. It holds your members, your standards and your subscription.

Project. One job. It holds the records that job produces, and it can contain people from many organisations at once.

Organisation level and project level. The two places a tool can exist. The organisation holds the standard, the project holds the working copy. See Organisation level and project level.

Tool. A configurable module: Inspections, Permits, Documents, Mail. Tools are set up at organisation level and activated per project. See The tools catalogue.

Register. The table most tools open on, with its search, filter, group, view and export controls. Learning it once covers nearly every tool. See Registers and the data table.

Saved view. A named arrangement of a register: its filters, grouping, sorting and columns. Saved for yourself, for the project or for the organisation.

My Items. Everything on a project waiting on you, gathered from every tool. See My Items.

Permission template. A named bundle of permissions assigned to a person, such as Site Manager or Subcontractor. Everybody on a project has one. See Permission templates.

Workflow. The sequence of approvals, reviews and notifications a record passes through. Template is the diagram; a run is one record's journey through it. Binding is attaching a template to a tool so new records use it. See What a workflow is.

Activation. Making an organisation-level template available on a project, which is the only route from organisation to project.

Contract and commercial

Contract sum. The agreed value of a contract, before variations. Variations move it; the current sum is the original plus everything approved since.

Schedule of values. The breakdown of a contract sum into sections and line items, each with a quantity, a rate and a value. It is what progress is claimed against, so it is the backbone of every claim. The same structure carries procurement schedules and variation lines.

Cost code and cost type. How a line is coded to the budget. The cost code says what part of the works it belongs to, the cost type says what kind of cost it is (labour, material, subcontract). Together they make the budget code a line is charged to.

Commitment. Money already committed against a budget line by an awarded contract or order, as opposed to money spent or money left.

Progress claim. A claim for work done in a period, made line by line against the schedule of values. It is assessed, then certified for payment. See Progress claims.

Certification. The assessed amount, which is what will actually be paid, as distinct from the amount claimed.

Retention. A percentage of each payment held back as security, released on agreed milestones. Teralo supports a percentage, a capped maximum, a bank guarantee in place of cash, and tiered arrangements, with a separate basis for variations.

Variation. A change to the scope, priced and approved, which moves the contract sum. Also called a change order. See Variations.

Provisional sum. An allowance in a contract for work not yet fully defined, adjusted once the work is known.

Direct cost. A cost booked to the project budget that does not come through a subcontract, such as a supplier invoice or plant hire.

Cashflow. What is due in and out over time, month by month, read across every project the organisation hosts. See Cashflow.

Tender. A priced offer, either one you receive or one you submit. See Tenders.

Procurement package. A parcel of work put out to the market: the scope, the firms invited, their prices side by side, and the award. See Procurement.

Take-off. Measuring quantities from a drawing set to build up a price. See Estimating.

Programme and scheduling

Programme. The schedule of the works: tasks, durations, dependencies and dates. Also called the program. See Program.

Work breakdown structure. The nested outline of the programme, from the whole job down to individual activities. Summary tasks roll up from what sits under them.

Dependency. A link saying one task cannot start or finish until another has, optionally with a lag of a number of working days.

Critical path. The chain of tasks with no spare time in it. Anything on it that slips delays the completion date.

Float. The spare time a task has before it starts delaying something else. Tasks with none are on the critical path.

Baseline. A saved snapshot of the programme, kept so today's dates can be compared against what was planned.

Look-ahead. The next few weeks pulled out of the programme for coordinating work on the ground, rather than the whole schedule.

Status date. The date the programme is reported as at, which is what progress is measured against.

Quality and safety

Inspection. A checklist carried out at a place on the job, with a record of what passed and what failed. See Inspections.

ITP. Inspection and test plan: the document setting out what is checked, when, by whom and against what standard. In Teralo an ITP is expressed as an inspection template plus the plan that schedules it, rather than as a separate tool.

Hold point. A stage that work cannot pass until it has been signed off. In Teralo a hold point is an inspection with a workflow bound to it, so the approval is what releases the next activity. A witness point is the softer version: somebody is given the chance to attend, but work continues if they do not.

Location. Where an inspection happens, held as a tree from a building down to a level, a room or an area. Plans and reporting both hang off it.

Observation. Something noticed on site that needs tracking to a close-out, with an assignee and a due date. Often raised from a failed inspection item. See Observations.

Incident and injury. An incident is an event; an injury is a person hurt in one. A near miss is an incident that could have caused harm and did not, and is worth recording for exactly that reason. A notifiable incident is one the regulator has to be told about. See Incidents and injuries.

Permit to work. Authorisation for high-risk work in a defined place for a defined period, released by an approval. See Permits.

Method statement. How a task will be carried out safely, reviewed before the work starts and signed on to by the workers doing it. Also called a SWMS, a safe work method statement, or a JSA. See Method statements.

Safety data sheet. The manufacturer's document for a hazardous substance, which has to be current and on site while the substance is. See Safety Data Sheets.

Induction. Getting a worker onto site: their details, their tickets and licences, their acknowledgements, and the expiry dates behind them. See Inductions.

Compliance document. Something the project requires from an organisation rather than from a person, such as an insurance certificate or a licence, usually with an expiry that gates site access. See Compliance documents.

Penetration. A hole through a fire-rated wall or floor for a service to pass through, which has to be sealed with a certified system and recorded. See Passive Fire.

Defect. Work not to the required standard, tracked until it is fixed and verified.

Documents and correspondence

Revision. A numbered version of a drawing or document. The current revision is the one to build from; earlier ones become superseded and stay in the record rather than being deleted. See Versions and revisions.

For Construction. A status marking a drawing as issued to build from, as opposed to for information, for tender or for approval.

Transmittal. A formal issue of documents to named recipients, with a record of what was sent, to whom and when. It is the proof that somebody was given the drawing.

Markup. An annotation drawn on top of a document: a cloud, a dimension, a comment, a highlight. Markups sit in a layer above the file, so the file itself is unchanged. See Markups and annotations.

Submittal. Something submitted for review before it can be used: a shop drawing, a material sample, a product data sheet. It goes out, comes back with a status, and may need revising and resubmitting. See Submittals.

RFI. Request for information: a formal question about the design or the documents, asked and answered on the record. Teralo has no separate RFI tool; RFIs are run as project correspondence, which keeps the question, the answer and the attachments in one thread. See Mail.

Distribution group. A named list of recipients on a project, so correspondence goes to a role rather than to whoever somebody remembered.

Site diary. The daily record of a site: who was there, what was done, the weather, deliveries, delays. Its value is entirely in being written on the day. See Site Diary.