The vocabulary of a construction discovery room, and where it breaks your data model.
If you're implementing CRM for an architecture, engineering, or construction firm, you will sit in a discovery session where everyone in the room understands each other and you don't. The vocabulary is dense, it's used casually, and nobody will slow down to define it because to them it isn't jargon.
This is the list I wish someone had handed me. It's organized by where the terms come up rather than alphabetically, because that's how you'll encounter them. Where a term has consequences for how you model data, I've said so.
Pursuit. The effort to win a specific project, from first awareness through award or loss. Close to an opportunity, and it breaks down in ways worth knowing about. A pursuit can run for years, involves significant unbillable cost, and is frequently declined on purpose.
Go / No-Go. The formal decision about whether to compete for a project at all. Usually a real meeting with real authority. This is the highest-value decision most firms make and standard CRM has no concept of it, because standard CRM assumes you want every deal.
Capture. The work done before an RFP is issued to position the firm to win it. Relationship building, early involvement with the owner, sometimes helping shape the scope. Firms that are good at capture win more often, and none of it shows up in a pipeline report.
RFQ, RFP, RFI. Request for Qualifications, Proposal, and Information respectively. RFQ comes first and asks whether you're capable. RFP asks what you'd do and what it costs. RFI is an information request, which confusingly also means something entirely different during construction (see below).
SOQ. Statement of Qualifications. The document a firm submits in response to an RFQ. Often reused and adapted across pursuits, which means firms care a lot about being able to find the last one.
Shortlist. Making the cut from the full field to the small group invited to interview or submit a full proposal. A meaningful pipeline stage and one of the few points where firms get real signal about their position.
Interview. The presentation to the owner and selection committee. On qualifications-based selections this is often where the job is actually won. Firms rehearse these seriously, sometimes for weeks.
BAFO. Best and Final Offer. A final round of pricing after negotiation, usually requested from the shortlisted firms. Fast, high stakes, and often tracked outside the CRM because of it.
Teaming agreement. A contract between firms who intend to pursue a project together, one as prime and others as subconsultants or subcontractors. The same two firms can be teammates on one pursuit and competitors on the next, which is the single most common way a standard account model gets uncomfortable.
JV. Joint venture. A formal partnership formed for a specific project, sometimes with its own legal entity. Revenue splits, shared risk, and a reporting problem for anyone whose data model assumes one firm owns one project.
The delivery method shapes almost everything: who the firm contracts with, when they get involved, how they're paid, and how they win.
Design-Bid-Build. The traditional sequence. The owner hires a designer, the design is completed, then contractors bid on the finished documents. Usually low bid wins. The contractor has no involvement during design.
Design-Build. One entity is responsible for both design and construction. Selection happens earlier, often on qualifications and approach rather than price, and the winning team is usually a designer and builder pursuing together.
CM at Risk. A construction manager is brought on during design, provides preconstruction services, and then takes on the risk of delivering within a guaranteed price. Common on complex or fast-tracked work. The firm is selected long before the drawings are finished.
IPD. Integrated Project Delivery. Shared risk and reward across owner, designer, and builder under one multi-party agreement. Rare, and firms that do it talk about it a lot.
Hard bid. Competitive pricing on completed documents, lowest responsive bidder wins. Win rates on hard bid work are low by design, and that's normal rather than a problem to solve.
Qualifications-based selection. Selection on experience and team rather than price. Common on public design work, where price competition is sometimes prohibited by law.
IDIQ. Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity. A master contract with no defined scope, under which the owner issues individual assignments over time. The firm wins the contract once, then competes or is assigned work repeatedly for years.
Task order. An individual assignment issued under an IDIQ. This is where the modeling gets interesting: the master contract is the win, but the revenue arrives through many child records, each with its own value and schedule.
Seller-doer. The defining staffing model in this industry. The people who win the work also deliver it. There is often no dedicated sales team. This is the single most important fact for anyone designing a CRM here, because it means your users are billable and every minute in your system is a minute not spent on a project that's paying.
Principal. A senior owner or partner in a design firm. Often the relationship holder and frequently the person whose name is on the pursuit.
Project Executive. Senior oversight across multiple projects, often abbreviated PX. Typically involved in pursuits and in client relationships rather than day-to-day execution.
Preconstruction. Often shortened to precon. The work before construction starts: estimating, scheduling, buildability review, budgeting. Precon staff are heavily involved in pursuits and their time is a real cost.
Estimator. Prices the work. On a competitive pursuit an estimator may spend weeks on a bid the firm loses.
Superintendent. Runs the field. Usually shortened to super. Not typically a CRM user, and the fastest way to lose credibility in a discovery session is to propose that they become one.
Project Manager. Runs the project commercially and administratively. Often a CRM user, usually reluctantly.
Owner. The client. The entity paying for the building. Note the collision: in Salesforce, "owner" means the user who owns a record. Expect confusion in every requirements conversation and consider not using the standard field label in the interface.
Owner's Rep. A consultant hired by the owner to manage the project on their behalf. A distinct party with real influence over selection, and frequently missing from data models that assume one client contact.
Architect of Record. The architecture firm legally responsible for the design documents. Distinct from a design architect who may have done the concept work.
GC. General contractor. Holds the construction contract and manages subcontractors.
Sub. Subcontractor. Performs a trade scope under the GC. Also a potential customer, a potential teammate, and a potential competitor depending on the project.
MEP. Mechanical, electrical, plumbing. The engineering disciplines, and often a firm's entire market.
Backlog. Work under contract but not yet performed. This is the number the board asks about, the number lenders care about, and the number that drives hiring decisions. It is not a pipeline report, and a CRM that can't produce it is answering a question nobody asked.
Book-to-burn. New work signed versus work performed in a period. Above one means backlog is growing.
Bonding capacity. The total value of work a surety will bond for a contractor. A hard constraint on how much a firm can pursue at once, and a good reason to turn down a project the firm could otherwise win.
GMP. Guaranteed Maximum Price. The contractor guarantees the project will not exceed a set number, usually with shared savings below it.
Mobilization. Getting set up on site at the start of a project. Slow, front-loaded, and part of why revenue doesn't arrive evenly.
Retainage. A percentage of each payment withheld by the owner until the project is complete, commonly five to ten percent. It means a meaningful share of a project's revenue arrives at the very end, sometimes long after the work is done.
Change order. A modification to the contract scope and price after execution. Routine, and a real component of final project value that has nothing to do with the value at award.
Closeout. The end-of-project process: punch list, documentation, final billing, retainage release. Drags. Often much longer than anyone plans for.
Billing curve. The distribution of revenue across a project's duration. Slow at mobilization, heavy in the middle, tapering through closeout. The shape varies by project type and delivery method. This is why forecasting from amount and close date produces a confidently wrong number.
Punch list. The list of remaining items before a project is accepted as complete.
RFI. During construction, a Request for Information: a formal question from the contractor to the design team about the documents. Note the collision with the pursuit-stage meaning. Context tells you which one someone means.
Vertical market. The building type a firm specializes in: healthcare, K-12, higher education, data centers, industrial, multifamily, aviation. Firms organize around these, and past experience in a vertical is often the deciding factor in selection.
Public versus private work. Public work follows procurement rules, is often required to be competitively bid, and has published schedules. Private work runs on relationships and the owner can do what they want. Firms often run both and they behave nothing alike.
Prequalification. The process of being approved to bid for an owner or program. Sometimes a prerequisite to seeing the RFP at all.
Repeat client. In this industry, a very large share of revenue comes from owners a firm has already worked for. This is why the relationship, not the pursuit, is the durable asset in the data model.
If you take nothing else from this list, take these five.
A pursuit is not an opportunity. It runs longer, costs real money to chase, and is often declined deliberately. A model that treats every "no" as a Closed Lost record is discarding the most valuable decision the firm makes.
Your users are billable. No dedicated sales team. Every minute in the CRM competes with billable work. This is the constraint that determines adoption, and no amount of training overrides it.
The relationship outlives the pursuit by a decade. The default model treats accounts as support for opportunities. Here it inverts.
The same firm is a competitor and a partner. Sometimes on the same day. An account model where a record has one relationship type will produce data nobody trusts.
Revenue does not arrive at close. It arrives over years, unevenly, with a chunk withheld until the end. Amount plus close date is not a forecast in this industry.
If I've got something wrong here, or missed a term you keep having to explain to consultants, I'd like to hear it. The contact page has an email address.