Plain definitions for every term on this site.
Commissioning vocabulary is precise, and much of it is used loosely. These are the definitions Archie is built to, so that a word on a page and a field in a deliverable mean the same thing.
Book a demo- AS 4254.2
- The Australian standard covering flexible and rigid ductwork, including duct leakage requirements.
- Asset register
- The master list of every tagged item on a project, with its type, its system, its location and the inspection records that apply to it.
- Asset tag
- The unique reference that identifies a physical item. Tags follow a structured convention on most projects, and the tag governs the asset type: where a type field contradicts the tag, the tag wins.
- BIM
- Building information modelling: the practice of building the project as a structured digital model as well as as drawings.
- Cause and effect matrix
- The fire engineering document defining what every life safety device must do in each fire mode. It is authoritative for which dampers are fire related and what state each one must go to.
- Commissioning
- The process of proving that installed building services actually perform as designed, and recording that proof, before a building is handed over.
- Commissioning plan
- The overarching document setting out the commissioning strategy, the responsibilities, the sequence and the acceptance criteria for a project.
- Damper
- A device in a duct that controls or stops airflow. Fire and smoke related dampers are life safety devices and carry their own approval path, separate from an ordinary volume control damper.
- Diagnostic set
- The portion of ground truth that is visible during development and used to tune. Diagnostic accuracy is always optimistic relative to held-out accuracy, and the gap between the two is itself measured.
- DW/143 and DW/144
- United Kingdom ductwork guidance documents widely used in Australia for duct leakage classes and specification. Guidance tier, and not enforceable on their own.
- Federated model
- Multiple discipline models combined into one coordinated model.
- Held-out or sealed set
- A portion of the ground truth deliberately withheld from development, so that accuracy can be measured on data the system has never seen and has never been tuned against.
- Hold point and witness point
- A hold point stops work until the nominated party inspects. A witness point invites them to attend but does not stop work if they do not. Both are created by the specification or the contract, and both carry a notice period.
- Hydrostatic pressure test
- A test that pressurises a section of pipework with water and holds it, to prove there is no leakage. A test section must be bounded by recorded isolation valves, or it cannot be tested at all.
- IFC
- Industry Foundation Classes, the open, vendor-neutral file format for exchanging building information models between different software.
- Independent commissioner
- The person who reviews and signs a commissioning deliverable. Everything Archie produces is a draft until that signature exists.
- ISO 19650
- The international standard for managing information across the lifecycle of a built asset.
- ISO 27001
- The international standard for information security management systems. The security page sets out the controls Archie runs today.
- ITC, inspection and test certificate
- The client-issued template defining what must be inspected for a given activity and how it is signed off.
- ITP, inspection and test plan
- The document that sets out what will be inspected and tested on a package, in what sequence, against what criteria, and who signs each step.
- ITR, inspection and test record
- A single instance of an inspection and test certificate completed against a specific asset, room or area. Some record types are asset based and some are area or room based.
- Leakage test
- A test that measures how much air a duct system loses at a defined test pressure, against a calculated allowable.
- Method statement
- The document describing how a particular activity, such as a leakage test, will actually be carried out, including the standards basis, the sequence, the safety controls and the failure modes.
- NCC
- The National Construction Code, Australia's building code.
- Pressure class
- The classification of a duct system by the pressure it operates at, which drives how much of it has to be leakage tested.
- Provenance
- The recorded chain from a value back to the document, page, element or clause it came from, including how it was derived. A value without provenance cannot be defended.
- RFI, request for information
- A formal query to the designer or the client when the documents do not answer a question, or when two documents disagree with each other.
- Room code
- The stable identifier for a room, as distinct from a location number, which is positional and renumbers the moment a row is inserted above it. Joining on the room code and re-deriving the number is the safe pattern.
- Rules of credit
- An agreed set of stages per trade, each carrying a weight, so that progress is credited by weighted completed stages rather than by an eyeballed percentage.
- Schematic, or process and instrumentation diagram
- A diagram showing how a system is connected and controlled. It is authoritative for topology, and it is never scaled or measured.
- Scope gap
- Anything named in one source of truth and absent from another. The specification, the drawings and the priced bill are three independent sources, and a gap between any two of them is a commercial exposure.
- Standards hierarchy
- The precedence order for requirements: legislation, then regulation, then the building code, then standards, then guidance. Guidance informs method and is never enforceable on its own.
- Take-off
- Measuring quantities from drawings or from a model: lengths of duct and pipe, surface areas, equipment counts. The take-off is the only source of measured quantities for compliance.