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A glossary of building operations terms
Plain definitions for the vocabulary that shows up in building software conversations, written for people who have to make decisions instead of pass an exam.
COI (certificate of insurance)
A one-page summary issued by a vendor's broker showing active policies: general liability, workers' compensation, auto, umbrella. It is evidence of coverage, not the policy itself, so it goes out of date without warning and has to be tracked by expiry date instead of filed.
COI tracking guideCritical date
Any dated obligation buried in a lease: renewal and termination windows, option dates, rent steps, restoration duties, insurance renewals. The lease does not send a reminder, so a critical date that is not tracked is a date that depends on somebody's memory.
Lease administrationStacking plan
A floor-by-floor picture of a building showing who occupies which suite, how much space is vacant and when leases expire. Coloured by expiration year it shows concentration risk in seconds, which a rent roll cannot.
Lease administrationPreventive maintenance (PM)
Work performed on a schedule to stop equipment failing, as opposed to reactive work that responds to a failure. Its value is continuity: a schedule that lives in software survives the engineer who wrote it.
Preventive maintenanceWork order
The record of a request from capture to closure: what, where, who owns it, what was done. The five stages that decide whether it closes on time are capture, routing, acceptance, work and notification.
Work order managementTenant portal
A place tenants log requests and see notices. Useful, and often mistaken for a building platform. A portal records the request; a platform routes it, dispatches it and closes it.
Portal vs platformVisitor management
Registering, admitting and logging guests in a multi-tenant building. Pre-registration by the host is what removes the queue at the desk, and the live record is what answers who is in the building during an evacuation.
Visitor managementAccess control
The system of readers, panels and credentials deciding who opens which door. In most buildings it works fine; what fails is the link between lease data and the credential list, which is why badges outlive move-outs.
Access controlMobile credential
A door credential carried in a phone wallet instead of on plastic. It is issued and revoked remotely, which removes card collection and makes expiry dates practical instead of theoretical.
Access controlSystem of record
The application that holds the authoritative version of a fact. For leases and money that is usually Yardi or MRI. Operations software should read from it instead of compete with it, or the building ends up with two rent rolls that disagree.
Sitting on top of YardiNOI (net operating income)
Revenue from a property minus operating expenses, before debt service and capital. Operations software touches both sides: recovered hours and consolidated licences on the expense line, amenity and parking revenue on the other.
The business caseAmenity utilisation
How much a bookable space is used against how much it could be. The number that decides whether an amenity floor earns its square footage, and the one most buildings cannot produce.
Amenity managementTransient parking
Short-term parking sold by the hour or day, as opposed to monthly or reserved. It is where most garage revenue leaks and where the tenant's visitor experience is decided.
Parking managementTenant improvement (TI)
Work done to a suite for an incoming or renewing tenant, usually funded by an allowance in the lease. Operationally it is a project running inside a live building, with contractors who need compliant insurance and time-bounded access.
Access controlEscalation
The rule for what happens when nobody responds. In after-hours operations it is the difference between a call that reaches a person and a voicemail found at seven the next morning. A chain with times attached, tested twice a year.
Work order managementPreventive vs predictive
Preventive work happens on a schedule. Predictive work happens when a measurement suggests a failure is coming. Most buildings should get preventive right before buying sensors for predictive.
Preventive maintenance