Exam 1 Vocab Flashcards
Providing for the needs of the current generation without compromising the ability of future generations to provide for their needs. Providing healthy, resource-conserving, and energy efficient buildings.
Sustainability:
Information or certifications used to describe the composition, environmental performance, or life-cycle impacts of a construction material or product.
Environmental labels:
A material or product’s life-cycle contribution to global warming, caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
Global warming potential:
A comprehensive method of describing the environmental impacts of a material or product, accounting for all phases of its life from original resource extraction through final disposal or recycling. 2 names.
Life-cycle analysis (LCA), Cradle-to-grave analysis:
The total energy consumption associated with a material or product throughout its life cycle.
Embodied energy:
A life-cycle analysis extending from original resource extraction only so far as when the material or product leaves its place of manufacture.
Cradle-to-gate analysis:
The total freshwater consumption associated with a material or product throughout its life cycle.
Embodied water:
The total carbon emissions associated with a material or product throughout its life cycle.
Embodied carbon:
The written portion of the construction documents, concerning the quality of materials and execution of construction procedures required for a building.
Specifications:
The graphic construction drawings and written specifications to which a building is constructed.
Construction documents:
A law that specifies how land within a jurisdiction may be used.
Zoning ordinance:
A set of regulations intended to ensure a minimum standard of health and safety
in buildings.
Building code:
A code that is offered by a recognized national organization as worthy of adoption by state or local governments.
Model building code:
The predominant Canadian model building code.
National Building Code of Canada:
The predominant U.S. model building codes.
International Building Code (IBC):
In the International Building Code, a definition of the types of activities that occur within the building or a part of the building, relating to considerations of life safety.
Occupancy:
In the International Building Code, any of five major systems of building construction that are differentiated by their relative resistance to fire.
Construction type:
The time, in minutes or hours, that a material or assembly will resist fire exposure as determined by ASTM E119.
Fire resistance rating:
A wall that carries structural loads from floors, roofs, or walls above.
Bearing wall:
An interior nonloadbearing wall.
Nonbearing wall, partition:
A type of wood construction made from large wood members and solid timber decking in a post-and-beam configuration; in the International Building Code, buildings of Type IV HT construction, consisting of heavy timber interior construction and noncombustible exterior walls, which are considered to have moderate fire-resistive properties.
Heavy Timber construction:
See International Building Code.
International Residential Code (IRC):
A federal regulation establishing equal access for persons with disabilities to public accommodations, commercial facilities, and transportation facilities.
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA):
A set of regulations or technical standards ensuring that buildings are accessible and usable by physically handicapped members of the population.
Access standard:
An organization that promulgates standards for testing, materials, and methods of building construction.
ASTM International: (American Society for Testing and Materials)
An organization that fosters the establishment of voluntary industrial standards.
American National Standards Institute (ANSI):
The trademarked title of a uniform indexing system for construction specifications, created by the Construction Specifications Institute and Construction Specifications Canada.
Master Format:
The trademarked name for a system of organizing building information based on functional relationships.
UniFormat:
The trademarked name for a system of describing building information encompassing a broad range of possible organizing criteria.
OmniClass Construction Classification System:
A method of providing design and construction services in which the design and construction phases of the project are provided by different entities, usually used in combination with sequential construction.
Design / bid / build:
A construction entity with responsibility for the overall conduct of a construction project.
General contractor:
A contractor who specializes in one area of construction activity and who works under a general CO2 tractor.
Subcontractor:
A method of providing design and construction services in which the design and construction phases of the project are provided by a single entity; frequently used in combination with fast track construction.
Design / build:
An entity that assists the owner in the procurement of construction services.
Construction manager:
A method of providing design and construction services in which each major phase of design and construction is completed before the next phase is begun.
Sequential construction:
A method of providing design and construction services in which design and construction overlap in time; (2 names)
Phased construction, fast track construction:
A graphic representation of a construction schedule, using a series of horizontal bars representing the duration of various tasks or groups of tasks that make up the project.
Gantt chart, bar chart:
The sequence of tasks that determines the least amount of time in which a construction project can be completed.
Critical path:
A small platform suspended on ropes from a steel building frame to permit ironworkers to work on a connection; a trowel with a slightly rough surface used in an intermediate stage of finishing a concrete slab; as a verb, to use a float for finishing concrete.
Float:
The sequence of tasks that determines the least amount of time in which a construction project can be completed.
Critical path method:
Methods of construction and its management that emphasize efficiency, elimination of waste, and continuous improvement in quality.
Lean construction:
The digital, three-dimensional modeling of building systems, with the linking of model components to a database of properties and relationships.
Building information modeling (BIM):
The digital two-dimensional representation of building systems.
Computer-aided design (CAD):
The portion of a building that transmits structural loads from the building into the earth.
Foundation:
Permanent loads on a building, including the weight of the building itself and any permanently attached equipment.
Dead load:
Nonpermanent loads on a building caused by the weights of people, furnishings, machines, vehicles, and goods in or on the building.
Live load:
A force on a building caused by wind pressure and/or suction.
Wind load:
A force on a structure caused by movement of the earth relative to the structure
during an earthquake.
Seismic load:
Subsidence of the various foundation elements of a building at the same rate, resulting in no distress to the structure of the building.
Uniform settlement:
A curtain wall system consisting of prefabricated panel units secured with site-applied mullions.
Unit-and-mullion system:
Subsidence of the various foundation elements of a building at differing rates.
Differential settlement:
Rock or soil.
Earth material:
A solid stratum of rock.
Bedrock:
Any particulate earth material, excluding rock.
Soil:
A fine-grained soil with plate-shaped particles, typically less than 0.0002 inch (0.005 mm) in size, whose properties are significantly influenced by the structural arrangements of the particles and the electrostatic forces acting between them.
Clay:
Soil with particles 0.003 inch (0.075 mm) or less in size; silts and clays.
Soil containing decayed vegetable and/or animal matter; topsoil.
Fine-grained soil:
Organic soil:
A soil, such as sand or gravel, that relies primarily on friction rather than attractive or repulsive forces between particles for its strength; (2 names)
Frictional soil, cohesionless soil:
A phenomenon in which a water-saturated soil loses most of its strength under the influence of sudden, large variations in loading such as can occur during an earthquake.
Soil liquefaction:
A soil such as clay whose particles are able to adhere to one another by means of cohesive and adhesive forces.
Cohesive soil:
The moisture content at which a soil arrives at a flowable consistency; a relative indication of soil cohesiveness.
Liquid Limit:
A clay soil that expands significantly with increased moisture content.
Expansive Soil:
Coarse-grained soil with a full range of particle sizes (2 names)
Well graded soil: and poorly sorted soil
A special instance of a poorly graded soil in which the soil particles are mostly of one size.
Uniformly graded soil:
A soil graded so as to contain a broad range of particle sizes, but with certain sizes omitted.
Gap graded soil:
Crushed stone or gravel backfill materials with good drainage characteristics, placed around a foundation to facilitate drainage.
Drainage fill:
The level at which the pressure of water in the soil is equal to the atmospheric pressure; effectively, the level to which groundwater will fill an excavation; a wood molding or shaped brick used to make a transition between a thicker foundation and the wall above.
Water table:
The steepest angle at which an excavation may be sloped so that the soil will not slide back into the hole. (2 names)
Maximum allowable slope, angle of repose:
Temporary vertical or sloping supports of steel or timber.
Shoring:
Planks placed between soldier beams to retain earth around an excavation.
Lagging:
A low-slump concrete mixture that is deposited by being blown from a nozzle at high speed with a stream of compressed air; pneumatically placed Concrète.
Pneumatically applied concrete, shotcrete:
A watery mixture of insoluble materials with a high concentration of suspended solids.
Slurry:
Horizontal compression members running from one side of an excavation to the other, used to support sheeting.
Crosslot bracing:
A horizontal beam used to support sheeting or concrete formwork.
Waler:
A sloping brace for supporting sheeting around an excavation.
Raker:
A tie, one end of which is anchored in the ground, with the other end used to support
sheeting around an excavation.
Tieback:
A posttensioned rod or cable inserted into a rock formation for the purpose of tying it together.
Rock anchor:
The extraction of water from an excavation or its surrounding soil.
Dewatering:
The above-ground portion of a building.
Superstructure:
A building foundation located at the base of a wall or a column, bearing on soil relatively close to the ground surface.
Shallow foundation:
A building foundation that extends through upper strata of incompetent soil to reach deeper strata with greater bearing capacity.
Deep foundation: