Last Thursday, the Biden administration reached bipartisan consensus on the proposed American Jobs Plan to allocate $1.2 trillion in new infrastructure spending in the US. A significant portion of that will be put towards revitalizing roads, bridges, water systems, public works, energy and other vital infrastructure projects.  This plan will create new opportunities and benefits to construction contractors for years to come, and here at 4castplus, we’re staying on top of the ongoing progress of this bill, along with the ways we can help in providing leading technology to support the industry.

When it comes to general terminology in project management, project controls and procurement, not all organizations use the same terms when describing the same common concepts. For one simple example, some may refer to the lowest level of the Work Breakdown Structure as the “Activity”, whereas others may call it the “Task”.   As a provider of project-driven software, we at 4castplus need to always provide a consistent and standardized lexicon for all terms that are used in the software platform; and ensure those terms, where possible, are based on industry standards.  It is our policy to adhere to standard terminology, formulas and workflows where such standards exist.  Despite our efforts however, not every term out there has a standard or a standard meaning, so we’re forced to go forward in some cases with terms that, to us, make the most sense, or appear to be most widely used.

The funny thing is, even when there are standards, people and organizations are nevertheless free to use whatever terms they choose to mean whatever they want.  This works fine of course as long as they’re working in isolation; but it can cause confusion and misunderstanding when it comes time to communicate to the outside world.  Similarly, when it comes time to adopting a standards-driven solution like 4castplus, organizations will often go through a translation in terminology that takes place to normalize people’s use of core terms in the software.