Working definitions.
For the operator who carries them.
Three entries today. The list grows as the work surfaces more terms worth a working definition. Written by an operator who carries the terms; reviewed honestly with the seams the residential tools miss.
Davis-Bacon, prevailing wage, WH-347 — the compliance burden every commercial contractor on a federal or state-funded job already knows by name.
The depth sensor in iPad Pro and iPhone Pro is good enough to bid commercial roofs from. Here's what it does, what its limits are, and how Forge uses it.
AccuLynx, Roofr, JobNimbus — built for residential storm-chase and insurance restoration. Commercial re-roof is a different trade, and the seams show.
The legally mandated rate — base plus fringe, per work classification — that every commercial contractor on a publicly funded job has to pay, and prove they paid.
A 1931 federal law that sets the floor for what you have to pay your crew on federally funded construction — and the source of the prevailing-wage and certified-payroll burden every commercial contractor already lives with.
A takeoff built from a 3D point cloud instead of a tape measure, a plan set, or an aerial photo. Here's what it measures, where it beats the old methods, where it doesn't, and how Forge produces one in the field.
Walk the structure, capture the geometry, get a line-item bid before you reach the truck. Here's what scan-to-estimate actually is, where it holds, and where it doesn't.
The count-and-measure step that turns a set of plans — or a building you just walked — into the quantities every bid is built on. Get it wrong and the whole estimate is wrong.
Structured cabling, access control, fire alarm, AV, surveillance — bidding a system that's measured in drops, devices, and head-ends, not square feet. Here's what it actually involves, and where the standard estimating tools quietly fail commercial integrators.
The contracted monthly income a commercial contractor earns whether or not they swing a hammer that month — monitoring, service agreements, managed accounts. It's the number that decides what your company is worth, and it's the number most contractors track worst.
The change-order is the most profitable work a commercial contractor does and the most reliably unbilled. The money isn't lost on the job site — it dies in someone's email.
Product data, shop drawings, samples, the AHJ review loop — the document approval process every commercial installation contractor has to clear before a single piece of equipment is allowed on the project. Here's the mechanic, and where it actually goes wrong.
Functional testing, the commissioning authority, the Cx report — the verification step that stands between a finished install and a closed-out, fully-billed project.
The room-by-room heat-loss and heat-gain math that sizes the equipment. Get it wrong and you oversize, short-cycle, and lose the callback. Here's what it actually computes — and where the bid should live.
Owner-Controlled and Contractor-Controlled Insurance Programs consolidate everyone's coverage under one policy — and quietly turn every commercial sub's certified payroll into a reporting machine.
A glossary entry that doesn't earn its space gets pulled. The list grows because the work does.