Glossary
Glossary: capital project management terms
The same role carries different names depending on the contracting tradition — a local term, an international one, or an English abbreviation. Below are short definitions of the terms that appear in contracts, reports and on this site.
Delivery models and roles
- Technical Customer
An organisation that performs the statutory owner's functions on the investor's behalf: permitting, design management, tendering, site supervision and commissioning. It works under an agency model — the client signs the contracts, while the technical customer prepares and polices them and answers to the investor for schedule, cost and quality.
Also called:
owner's engineerowner's project delivery organisation- PMC
Project Management Consultant — a company that manages a construction project on the owner's behalf. It neither designs nor builds: it organises and controls those who do, and answers to the investor for schedule, cost, quality and handover. The same role Kazakhstani practice calls the technical customer.
Also called:
Project Management Consultantproject management consultancy- EPCM
A model in which one company becomes the single managing contractor across three streams: engineering, procurement and construction management. Unlike EPC, the fee is paid for management while the cost of works and equipment stays open-book to the client.
Also called:
Engineering, Procurement and Construction Managementmanaging contractor- EPC
Fixed-price turnkey delivery: the contractor designs, procures and builds, absorbing cost risk. Its economic interest is opposed to the investor's — any saving inside the fixed price becomes its margin — so an EPC project still needs independent quality and quantity control above the contractor.
Also called:
turnkey general contractingEngineering, Procurement, Construction- Managed Service
Buying a single management function instead of the whole owner's role: project controls only, supervision only, procurement or document control only. A rational entry point where a full contract is uneconomic, or where a company has its own team but lacks one competence.
Also called:
discrete management function
Project controls
- Project controls
The engineering discipline that answers two questions: when the asset will actually be finished and what it will finally cost. It covers planning and scheduling, physical progress measurement, cost control, change management and forecasting.
Also called:
cost and schedule controlplanning and scheduling- Baseline
The approved schedule and budget against which every deviation is measured. Without one, “two months behind” means nothing: there is no reference point. Changes enter the baseline only through a formal procedure.
Also called:
baseline schedulecost baseline- Critical path
The chain of activities that determines the project completion date. A delay to any activity on it moves the end of the project by the same amount; a delay elsewhere moves nothing until it consumes that activity's float.
Also called:
CPMcritical path method- Earned value
A method comparing three quantities: how much work was planned, how much was actually completed, and what was spent on it. It produces the SPI (schedule) and CPI (cost) indices — a numerical measure of deviation instead of a qualitative judgement.
Also called:
EVMSPICPI- Cost to Complete
A forecast of the expenditure still required to finish the project, calculated from actual status. Added to sunk cost it gives the final cost forecast. It is the key figure for a lender because it answers whether the committed facility is sufficient.
Also called:
CTCEstimate at CompletionEAC- S-curve
A cumulative curve of earned quantities or cost over time. Comparing the planned, actual and forecast curves shows both the size of the slippage and its trend — whether the project is recovering or continuing to diverge.
- Rules of credit
The rules by which physical progress becomes a percentage: each unit of work carries a weight and a completion criterion. Without them, percentage complete is declared by eye by the performers and is worthless.
Also called:
progress measurement rules
Procurement and contracts
- Long lead items
Equipment with a manufacturing and delivery cycle of 6 to 18 months: process lines, transformers, cranes, UPS units, chillers. If these are not identified and ordered early, delivery sets the start-up date and money can no longer accelerate it.
Also called:
LLI- Change control
A formal procedure: a change is registered, assessed for cost and schedule impact, approved, and only then carried into the baseline. Without it, additional works are agreed on site and enter payment certificates unpriced.
Also called:
change managementchange register
Design
- Value engineering
Work on design decisions to reduce delivery cost while preserving the required functional and operational performance. “While preserving” is the operative phrase — it separates value engineering from simply cutting scope. It is worth doing before working drawings are issued.
Also called:
design optimisation
Quality and supervision
- Technical supervision
Control of compliance between executed work, the design, the codes and the certified quantities, carried out in the owner's interest. It covers incoming material inspection, in-process and acceptance control, covered-works certification and quantity verification before certificates are signed.
Also called:
site supervisionconstruction control- Covered-works certification
Inspection and documentary record of work before it is closed by the next layer: reinforcement, waterproofing, foundations, buried services. If work is covered without a certificate the evidence is lost permanently — it can no longer be seen.
Also called:
inspection of covered works- ITP
An Inspection and Test Plan lists the control points for each work type with the inspection method, acceptance criteria, required records and responsible parties. It makes acceptance predictable for everyone involved.
Also called:
Inspection and Test Plan
Handover and documentation
- Commissioning
The management process between “construction is finished” and “the asset is running”: system boundaries, readiness criteria, test sequence, participant coordination and documentation of the result. It is planned during design, not after construction.
Also called:
start-up and handover- Punch list
A single register of defects before acceptance, categorised by impact on handover: what blocks it and what is cosmetic. Without that categorisation a team spends equal time closing the critical and the trivial.
Also called:
snag listdefect register- As-built documentation
Certificates, logs, test reports and record drawings — evidence of how the work was performed and what was actually built. It cannot be assembled before the acceptance commission: some evidence is physically unrecoverable.
Also called:
site recordsrecord drawings- ISO 19650
The international standard for information management on construction projects, defining naming, statuses, revisions and exchange in a common data environment. In practice it removes the single largest source of error — building to superseded information.
Also called:
common data environmentCDE
Financing
- Lender's technical monitoring
An independent monthly check for a bank or investor: whether the claimed quantities were actually built, whether expenditure matches the budget, and whether the facility is sufficient to completion. Performed by a party with no role in the construction.
Also called:
financial and technical monitoringbank monitoring- Technical due diligence
A pre-transaction review of a site or asset: title and encumbrances, development potential, ground conditions, utility connection conditions and cost. It answers what the asset will actually cost, as opposed to its transaction price.
Also called:
pre-acquisition surveysite due diligence
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