| Word | Definition | Comments |
| AAH | Academy of Architecture for Health: The Academy of Architecture for Health (AAH) improves the quality of healthcare through design by developing, documenting, and disseminating knowledge; educating healthcare architects and other related constituencies; advancing the practice of healthcare architecture; improving the design of healthcare environments; affiliating and advocating with others that share our vision and promoting research.
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| AAHSA | American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging: The members of the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging (www.aahsa.org) help millions of individuals and their families every day through mission-driven, not-for-profit organizations dedicated to providing the services that people need, when they need them, in the place they call home. | |
| AAMC | Association of American Medical Colleges: The AAMC serves and leads the academic medicine community to improve the health of all.
The vision of the AAMC and its members is a healthy nation and world in which:
- America's system of medical education, through continual renewal and innovation, prepares physicians and scientists to meet the nation's evolving health needs
- The nation's medical students, biomedical graduate students, residents, fellows, faculty, and the health care workforce are diverse and culturally competent
- Advances in medical knowledge, therapies, and technologies prevent disease, alleviate suffering, and improve quality of life
- The nation's health system meets the needs of all
Concern for compassion, quality, safety, efficacy, accountability, affordability, professionalism, and the public good guide the health care community
- Medical schools and teaching hospitals continually earn the trust and support of the public for their special missions
- The AAMC and its members are a dynamic force in realizing this vision.
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| AASHE | Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education:
AASHE is an association of colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada working to create a sustainable future. It was founded in 2006 with a mission to promote sustainability in all sectors of higher education - from governance and operations to curriculum and outreach-through education, communication, research and professional development. Businesses, NGO's, and government agencies can participate as AASHE partner members.
AASHE aims to advance the efforts of the entire campus sustainability community by uniting diverse initiatives and connecting practitioners to resources and professional development opportunities. The association also provides a professional home for campus sustainability coordinators and directors.
AASHE defines sustainability in an inclusive way, encompassing human and ecological health, social justice, secure livelihoods, and a better world for all generations.
AASHE is a member-driven, independent 501(c)(3). Membership in AASHE covers every individual at an institution.
http://www.aashe.org/index.php
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| Ab initio (ab init) | From the beginning. Can mean that breaking some terms in a longrunning contract results in the contract having been broken from the start. | |
| ABCB | Australian Building Codes Board. | |
| ABRAFAC | Brazilian Association of Facilities. | |
| Absorption | Process by which a substance or particle is drawn into the structure of another. | |
| Abusive behavior | Actions which result in injury such as slapping, pinching, pulling hair or other actions such as pulling clothing, spitting, threats or other fear producing actions such as racial slurs, posturing , damage to property, throwing food or objects. | |
| Acceptance | The unconditional agreement to an offer. This creates the contract. Before acceptance, any offer can be withdrawn, but once accepted the contract is binding on both sides. Any conditions have the effect of a counter offer that must be accepted by the other party. | |
| Access Floor | A secondary floor made up of interchangeable floor panels supported by pedestals on the structural floor, with or without stringers. Access floors provide an accessible underfloor space for electrical, mechanical, computer and communication services, or for air distribution. | |
| Accreditation | The certification by a statutory or approved authority of the facilities, capabilities, objectivity, competence and integrity of an organisation or individual to provide a specified service and/or required operation. | |
| ACCREDITATION 1 | Recognition issued by a national accrediting organization to behavioral healthcare and human services providers for their compliance with the established evaluation criteria for service quality. Commonly know accrediting organizations include the Rehabilitation Accreditation Commission (CARF), the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), and the Council on Accreditation (COA). | |
| Acid Rain | The precipitation of dilute solutions of strong mineral acids, formed by the mixing in the atmosphere of various industrial pollutants (primarily sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides) with naturally occurring oxygen and water vapor. | |
| Activity Settings | Various types of work settings to suit individual or group activities such as a lounge area, desk work area, or conference area. | |
| Acute Exposure | A single exposure to a toxic substance that may result in severe biological harm or death. Acute exposures are usually characterized as lasting no longer than a day, as compared to longer, continuing exposure over a period of time. | |
| Acute Toxicity | The ability of a substance to cause severe biological harm or death soon after a single exposure or dose. Also, any poisonous effect that results from a single short-term exposure to a toxic substance. | |
| ADA | Americans with Disabilities Act (1990) is a wide-ranging legislation intended to make American Society more accessible to people with disabilities. is a legislative act/law established to offer a clear and comprehensive prohibition of discrimination on the basis of disability. This act prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in "places of public accommodation" (businesses and non-profit agencies that serve the public) and "commercial facilities" (other businesses). The regulation includes Appendix A to Part 36 - Standards for Accessible Design establishing minimum standards for ensuring accessibility when designing and constructing a new facility or altering an existing facility. http://www.ada.gov/
Also refer DDA for Australia.
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| Adaptive Reuse | Renovation of a building or site to include elements that allow a particular use or uses to occupy a space that originally was intended for a different use. | |
| ADDENDUM | A document used to expand or more fully explain the terms of a solicitation which is incorporated as part of the original solicitation. This modification becomes a legal part of the solicitation. This term should not be confused with a contract amendment as it is not used to change the terms of a contract. | |
| Adjacencies/ Proximities | A measure of the preferred location of an organisational unit relative to some or all of the other organisational units in that organisation. It is normally expressed in degrees such as important, desirable, unimportant, undesirable. It can also refer to the relationship of those business units or other specific functions to physical and external features such as the building core, structural zones, natural light, views or entry points. | |
| ADMINISTRATIVE STANDARDS | Criteria for evaluating a provider's compliance with contract provisions. | |
| Adsorbent | Material that is capable of the binding and collection of substances or particles on its surface without chemically altering them. | |
| ADVANCE PAYMENTS | A payment situation whereby under certain circumstances it is possible to make a portion of the contract funds available to a provider prior to the delivery of services and or expenditure of funds by the provider. | |
| AEC | Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (Building Information Model) | |
| Aerobic Treatment | Process by which microbes decompose complex organic compounds in the presence of oxygen and use the liberated energy for reproduction and growth. | |
| Aerosol | Suspended droplets of liquid or liquid dispersions in air. | |
| AFE | AFE (Association for Facilities Engineering) is the world's largest association representing facilities engineers, maintenance managers. and supervisors. Born in 1953 and now growing in the greater DC area, the mission is to ?provide education, certification, technical information and other relevant resources for plant and facility engineering, operations and maintenance professionals worldwide.
Publication "Facilities Engineering Journal"
http://www.afe.org | |
| Affinity Analysis | Affinity analysis is a tool that uses information about preferred adjacencies in matrix form to assist in planning the layout of business unit workspace.
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| Agent | Somebody appointed to act on behalf of another person (known as the principal). The amount of authority to deal that the agent has is subject to agreement between the principal and the agent. However, unless told otherwise, third parties can assume the agent has full
powers to deal. | |
| Agreement | A contract between two or more parties, either written or oral. | |
| AHA | American Hospital Association: The American Hospital Association (AHA) is the national organization that represents and serves all types of hospitals, health care networks, and their patients and communities. Close to 5,000 hospitals, health care systems, networks, other providers of care and 37,000 individual members come together to form the AHA.
Through representation and advocacy activities, AHA ensures that members' perspectives and needs are heard and addressed in national health policy development, legislative and regulatory debates, and judicial matters. AHA advocacy efforts include the legislative and executive branches and include the legislative and regulatory arenas.
Founded in 1898, the AHA provides education for health care leaders and is a source of information on health care issues and trends.
http://www.aha.org/aha/about/index.html
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| AHCA | American Healthcare Association: The American Health Care Association (AHCA) is a non-profit federation of affiliated state health organizations, together representing more than 10,000 non-profit and for-profit assisted living, nursing facility, developmentally-disabled, and subacute care providers that care for more than 1.5 million elderly and disabled individuals nationally.
AHCA represents the long term care community to the nation at large ? to government, business leaders, and the general public. It also serves as a force for change within the long term care field, providing information, education, and administrative tools that enhance quality at every level.
http://www.ahcancal.org/about_ahca/Pages/default.aspx
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| AI | Artificial Intelligence: Devices and applications that exhibit human intelligence and behavior including robots, expert systems, voice recognition, natural and foreign language processing. It also implies the ability to learn and adapt through experience.
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| AIA | The American Institute of Architects: Based in Washington, D.C., the American Institute of Architects (AIA) has been the leading professional membership association for licensed architects, emerging professionals, and allied partners since 1857. Through education, legislative and regulatory development, professional education, and research, the AIA and its more than 83,000 members express their commitment to excellence in design and livability in our nation?s buildings and communities.
http://www.aia.org | |
| Air Changes Per Hour or ACH | Number of times per hour a volume of air, equivalent to the volume of space, enters that space. | |
| Air Diffuser | An air outlet device which distributes and diffuses air. | |
| Air Exchange Rate | The rate at which outside air replaces indoor air in a given space. See Air Changes Per Hour. | |
| Air Handling Unit (AHU) | A unit that relates to any or all of the following functions: heating, cooling, humidification, dehumidification or filtration of mechanically circulated air. | |
| Air Plenum | Any space used to convey air in a building, furnace or structure. The space above a suspended ceiling is often used as an air plenum. | |
| Air Pollutant | Any substance in air that could, in high enough concentration, harm man, other animals, vegetation or material. Pollutants may include almost any natural or artificial composition of matter capable of being airborne. They may be in the form of solid particles, liquid droplets, gases or any combination thereof. Air pollutants are often grouped in categories for ease in classification. Some of these categories are solids, sulfur compounds, volatile organic chemicals, particulate matter, nitrogen compounds, oxygen compounds, halogen compounds, radioactive compounds and odors. | |
| Air Pollution | The presence of contaminants or pollutant substances in the air that interfere with human health or welfare, or produce other harmful environmental effects. | |
| Air Toxics | Any air pollutant for which a National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) does not exist that may reasonably be anticipated to cause serious or irreversible chronic or acute health effects in humans. | |
| Airborne Particulates | Total suspended particulate matter found in the atmosphere as solid particles or liquid droplets. Chemical composition of particulates varies widely, depending on location and time of year. Sources of airborne particulates include dust, emissions from industrial processes, combustion products from the burning of wood and coal, combustion products associated with motor vehicle or non-road engine exhausts, and reactions to gases in the atmosphere. | |
| Alliance for Sustainable Built Environments | ASBE is an alliance of leading sustainable manufacturing companies committed to the education of the marketplace on sustainability. Additionally, the Alliance is compiling a bundled offer of green products for use in the construction of high performance green buildings. Milliken & Company is a founding member. www.greenerfacilities.org | |
| Alternative Energy | Energy from a source other than the conventional fossil-fuel sources of oil, natural gas and coal (i.e., wind, running water, the sun). Also referred to as "alternative fuel." Milliken seeks renewable resources to meet its energy needs. See Methane. | |
| Alternative Officing | A mechanism to optimise the accommodation requirements of an organisation using non-traditional workplace environments. | |
| Ambient Air | The surrounding air. | |
| AMC | Asset Management Council. Also referred to Maintenance Engineers Society of Australia (MESA). | |
| AMENDMENT | A document by which significant changes are made to the terms of an executed contract. Changes requiring an amendment include, but are not limited to adjustments in costs, services, time period, and method of payment. The amendment is incorporated as part of the original contract. | |
| Amenities | Indoor or outdoor facilities and/or conditions associated with a building, site, or community used for personal comfort, convenience or enjoyment of leisure as distinct from the work of industry or business. | |
| Amenity Area | Any area in a facility used by employees for non-work activity, such as employee dining rooms, vending areas, lounges, day-care centers and fitness or health centers. | |
| Amortization | The process of recovering, over a period of time, the capital investment through scheduled, systematic repayments at regular intervals. Periodic contributions to a sinking fund to discharge a debt or make a replacement at a future date. | |
| AMP | Association of Maintenance Professionals
WWW.amp.org | |
| AMPRI | Asosiasi Manajemen Properti Indonesia (the Indonesia Property Management Association). The non-profit association of both the companies and the professionals in Property/Facility Management in Indonesia. AMPRI is the affiliate of BOMA International. | |
| Analytical tools | Any process used to evaluate some aspect of an item. Each tool is used for a specific purpose. Several tools are outlined in this white paper. | |
| Ancillary Area | Floor area which supports more than one workspace, such as meeting rooms or utility area for two or more business units, but is not shared by the whole organisation. | |
| Animation | A collection of tracks that define the dynamic property changes to associated objects. | |
| Annual Capital Renewal Expenditures | Expenditures over and above facility maintenance operating budget expenditures required to keep the physical plant in reliable operating condition for its present use. These expenditures are over and above normal maintenance for items with a life cycle in excess of one year and are not normally contained in an annual facility operating budget.
Also referred to as CAPEX. | |
| Annualized Component Renewal Cost | The average annual cost, in today's dollars, of establishing a long-term funding reserve to replace building components as computed from detailed analysis performed during the life cycle projections of individual building components. | |
| ANSI | American National Standards Institute is a premier source for timely, relevant, actionable information on national, regional, international standards and conformity assessment issues. | |
| ANSI/EIA/TIA-568 | A United States industry standard published jointly by ANSI (American National Standards Institute) and the EIA/TIA (Electronic Industry Alliance/Telecommunications Industry Alliance) specifying a generic structured cabling system for commercial buildings. | |
| Antimicrobial | An agent that prevents the growth of microbes. Milliken?s AlphaSan? is a safe and stable silver-based ion tested for efficacy and toxicity and cleared by the FDA and EPA for food contact. | |
| APPA | Association of Physical Plant Administrators (APPA) serves as a resource to the press and other media outlets on topics related to facility management at educational facilities.
Also refer to TEFMA. | |
| Arbitration | Using an independent third party to settle disputes without going to court. The third party acting as arbitrator must be agreed by both sides. Contracts often include arbitration clauses nominating an arbitrator in advance. | |
| Area Per Person | The net lettable area of an occupancy in square meters (Property Council of Australia?s Method of Measurement) divided by the number of full time (or equivalent) employees (FTE) occupying the space. Also defined as space utilization rate. | |
| ASHE | American Society for Healthcare Engineering. http://www.ashe.org/ashe/about/mission/index.html | |
| ASHRAE | American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers. http://www.ashrae.org/ | |
| Aspect | Appearance to the eye or mind. The extent of view to the outside of building from a specific position on the floor. | |
| Assaults | Any aggressive act of hitting, kicking, pushing, biting, scratching, sexual attack or any other such physical or verbal attacks directed to the worker by a patient/client, relative or associated individual which arises during or as a result of the performance of duties and which results in death, physical or mental injury. An assault may be committed without touching, striking, or doing bodily harm to another person. | |
| Asset | Anything considered by an organisation having a positive value, especially of financial value. | |
| Asset Management | A systematic process of maintaining, upgrading and operating assets, combining engineering principles with sound business practice and economic rationale, and providing tools to facilitate a more organised and flexible approach to making the decisions necessary to achieve the public?s expectations. | |
| Asset Register | A record of items considered worthy of identification as discrete assets, A physical asset register includes information about each asset, such as type of construction and technical details. | |
| Asset Utilization | Percentage of time a plant is operating at Maximum Demonstrated Production Rate, with perfect quality and defined yield. This is often used as a metric for CMMS implementations. | |
| Assignable Area | Portion of the plannable area on a floor that can be assigned to occupant groups or functions. (ASTM E631-93a Reapproved 1998)
DISCUSSION - Assignable area includes interior walls and interior encroachments. It does not include restricted areas, occupant voids, unassignable areas or secondary circulation. Users may choose to measure interior encroachments, and if measured, interior encroachments like secondary circulation area are generally pro-rated back to the occupant(s), e.g. not directly assignable.
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A Unified Approach for Measuring Office Space
For Use in Facility and Property Management
Copyright 2007. Building Owners and Managers Association International and International Facility Management Association. All rights reserved. ISBN # 1-883176-73-5
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| ATFACHMENT I | The unique, program-specific part of a contract that contains the statement of work for each provider including services to be provided, manner of service provision, method of payment, and special provisions. | |
| Attribute Data | Tabular or textual data describing the geographic characteristics of features. | |
| Audit | A thorough inspection of the base building, interior development and infrastructure; also used as a tool to provide senior management with the cost of capital renewal programs on which to base strategic facility planning. | |
| AUDIT TRAIL | A recorded flow of transactions from initiation to finalization with supporting documentation to justify each transaction. | |
| Automatic Sprinklers | The part of a fire sprinkler system that discharges water once a fire has been detected, such as when a predetermined temperature has been reached. Also refer fire sprinkler. | |
| Average | An arithmetical mean, or intermediate quantity of a set of quantities, being the sum or total of all responses divided by the number of respondents. | |