Glossary of operations documents and AI terms

Software that reads documents or data, decides what to do under rules and examples, and acts inside existing systems: creates an order in the ERP, fills a customs declaration, levels a bid, flags an invoice variance. Unlike a fixed script it handles documents in varying formats and routes exceptions to a person. In operations an agent is deployed on one workflow at a time, with a human review step where the decision has consequences, and measured on the share of cases it completes without help.

Read more: AI agents guide

The share of scheduled time a machine is mechanically able to work: scheduled hours minus downtime for planned maintenance and breakdowns, divided by scheduled hours. It is read from the maintenance system, not assumed. A fleet at 85% availability has, on a 12-hour shift, about 10 hours of trucks that can run; utilisation then says how many of those hours they actually haul. The two are multiplied in fleet sizing and in productivity reporting.

Read more: Haul truck fleet sizing calculator

Adjusting subcontractor bids to the same scope before comparing them: adding a plug value for each item a bidder excluded, adding costs one bidder carried and another did not (bond, tax, hoisting), and deducting scope that was not asked for. The leveled totals show what each bid costs for the same work; the lowest number as submitted is often the bid that left the most out. The award then weighs qualifications, schedule and bonding against the leveled price.

Read more: Bid leveling calculator

The document a carrier issues when it takes goods for shipment: a receipt for the cargo, evidence of the contract of carriage and, for an ocean bill, a document of title that can be negotiated. It names shipper, consignee and notify party, describes the goods, packages, weight and marks, and states the ports and the freight terms. Discrepancies between the bill, the invoice and the packing list are what customs holds and banks reject under letters of credit.

Read more: Bill of lading processing

The schedule of unit prices in a French unit-price contract: one price per item of work, which the contractor commits to and which is applied to the quantities actually executed, measured on site. The BPU binds on prices; quantities come from the DQE as an estimate and from the measurement of the works for payment. Used for maintenance and framework contracts and for works whose quantities cannot be fixed in advance.

Read more: How to respond to a French construction tender

The unit of cargo volume: length × width × height in metres, summed over the packages of a shipment. Sea LCL freight is priced per CBM or per revenue ton (the greater of the weight in tonnes and the volume in CBM); air and road freight convert the volume into a volumetric weight with a divisor and charge the greater of actual and volumetric weight. The CBM is also what decides whether a shipment fits a 20-foot or 40-foot container.

Read more: CBM and volumetric weight calculator

The technical specification of a French construction contract: for each lot, the works to be carried out, the materials, the standards and the execution requirements. It ranks among the contract documents and governs what the price covers. Contractors read it against the DPGF or BPU to find items described but not priced, and items priced but not described; those gaps are where disputes start.

Read more: How to respond to a French construction tender

On US public works subject to the Davis-Bacon Act and similar state laws, the weekly payroll report the contractor submits for each worker: classification, hours by day, rate, fringe benefits, gross and net pay, with a signed statement of compliance. Form WH-347 is the federal format. Agencies check it against the wage determination for the project; an error in classification or fringe credit is a compliance finding, not a bookkeeping one.

Read more: WH-347 certified payroll checker

A written agreement, signed after the contract, that changes the work, the contract sum, the contract time, or several of them. It records what changed, what originated it (an owner request, a design bulletin, an RFI answer, a field condition), the price broken down by labor, material, equipment and subcontract with the agreed markups, and the new contract sum and completion date. A change directive orders the work before price and time are agreed.

Read more: Change order template

The weight a carrier bills a shipment on: the greater of its actual gross weight and its volumetric weight, the volume divided by the mode's divisor (6,000 cm³ per kg is the IATA standard for air; road and express carriers commonly use 5,000, sometimes 4,000 or 3,000). A light, bulky shipment is billed on volume; a dense one on its scale weight. The divisor is in the carrier's tariff, and a wrong one is a frequent invoice error.

Read more: CBM and volumetric weight calculator

The consignment note for international road transport under the CMR Convention of 1956, in force in most of Europe and in several countries of North Africa and the Middle East. It records sender, carrier, consignee, the goods, packages and weight, the place of taking over and delivery, and the reservations made at each. It is evidence of the contract and of the condition of the goods: a reservation written on it at delivery is what supports a claim for damage or shortage.

Read more: CMR consignment note automation (in French)

The classification the Construction Specifications Institute publishes for organizing specifications and construction information in North America: fifty divisions (03 Concrete, 09 Finishes, 26 Electrical...) subdivided into six-digit section numbers. Specifications, estimates, submittal logs and subcontract packages reference the same section numbers, which is what lets a line in an estimate be checked against its specification and matched to the trade that will price it.

Read more: Specifications organized by MasterFormat

The formal statement to a customs administration of goods entering or leaving a territory: tariff classification, origin, customs value, quantities, the procedure requested and the documents supporting it. Duties and taxes are assessed on it, and the declarant is liable for its accuracy. Most declaration data is transcribed from the commercial invoice, the packing list, the transport document and the certificate of origin, which is why automation starts with reading those documents before filing.

Read more: Customs declaration automation

The French tender package: the administrative documents (règlement de consultation, CCAP, acte d'engagement), the technical documents (CCTP, drawings) and the price documents (DPGF, BPU, DQE). Reading a DCE means mapping which document governs what, checking the drawings against the CCTP, and finding what the price must cover before the quantities are measured. Public contracts follow the Code de la commande publique; private ones, the contract itself.

Read more: How to respond to a French construction tender

The charge a shipping line applies when a container stays inside the port or terminal beyond the free time allowed after discharge (import) or before loading (export). It is counted per container per day, usually in tiers that rise with time, from the day free time ends. Demurrage is distinct from detention, which concerns the container outside the terminal, and from port storage, which the terminal itself charges. Free time and tiers are in the carrier's tariff or the contract.

Read more: Detention and demurrage calculator

In container shipping, the charge for keeping a carrier's container outside the terminal beyond the free time, between pickup and the return of the empty (import) or between the empty pickup and the gate-in (export). In road freight, the charge for holding a truck at a stop beyond the free time for loading or unloading, counted by the hour from the arrival time on the delivery documents. Both are audited against recorded times, not against the invoice's own figures.

Read more: Detention and demurrage calculator

The combination of OCR, layout analysis and language models that reads operational documents as a person would: finding the fields of a bill of lading whatever its layout, the exclusions in a bid letter, the quantities on a drawing, the line items of a purchase order, and linking them to the systems and documents they relate to. The output is structured data with a reference to where each value came from, so a reviewer can check it on the source page.

Read more: Document intelligence for construction

In French construction tenders, the itemized breakdown of a lump-sum price: each item of work with its unit, quantity, unit price and amount, adding up to the contract price. The lump sum is what binds; the DPGF explains it, and a quantity error in it is generally the contractor's risk. It is read against the CCTP, the technical specification, to check that every described item is priced and every priced item is described.

Read more: How to respond to a French construction tender

In a French unit-price tender, the list of items with estimated quantities that bidders price with their BPU unit prices to produce a comparable total. The quantities are indicative, not contractual: payment follows the quantities actually executed. The DQE is what the buyer uses to rank offers, which makes an unbalanced unit price (very low on items whose quantity will shrink, very high on those that will grow) a classic point of review.

Read more: DQE template (in French)

Morocco's single customs declaration, filed for every import, export or transit operation through the customs administration's systems. It carries the tariff heading, origin, customs value, Incoterm, weight, the documents attached (invoice, packing list, certificate of origin, bill of lading) and the duties and taxes assessed. Most of the data is copied from those documents, which is why a mismatch between them is found at filing or at inspection.

Read more: Morocco import duty calculator

The electronic version of the CMR consignment note, allowed by the 2008 additional protocol to the CMR Convention for the countries that have ratified it. The data is the same; signatures, reservations and the time of delivery are captured on a device and shared with the parties at once, instead of on a paper copy that reaches the office days later. Adoption depends on both countries on the route having joined the protocol and on carriers and shippers using compatible platforms.

Read more: CMR consignment note automation (in French)

The exchange of business documents between companies' systems in standard structured formats (EDIFACT, ANSI X12): purchase orders, order confirmations, shipping notices, invoices. EDI removes manual entry for the trading partners connected to it, at the cost of a mapping project per partner, which is why many mid-sized suppliers have EDI with a few large customers and email or PDF orders from everyone else. AI order intake covers the second group without asking customers to change how they order.

Read more: EDI alternatives for order intake

Creating a sales order in the enterprise resource planning system (SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, a custom system) from a customer's order document: finding the customer and ship-to, translating the customer's item references into internal codes, checking prices, quantities, units and dates, and saving a validated order. It is measured in minutes per order and in the share of orders that come back as errors, which together give the cost of the manual step.

Read more: Order entry error cost calculator

The suite of international standard contracts published by the Fédération Internationale des Ingénieurs-Conseils, used on projects across the Middle East, Africa and Asia: the Red Book for works designed by the employer, the Yellow Book for design-build, the Silver Book for EPC turnkey. FIDIC contracts run on notices with time bars: a claim not notified within the stated period can be lost, so the record of letters, instructions and site events is the contract's working memory.

Read more: FIDIC Red Book notices and claims guide

An engineer who builds and runs the software inside the client's operation rather than in the vendor's office: observes the workflow on site, maps the documents and systems, builds the agent on the client's own data, runs it with the team and expands it. The term comes from defense and was adopted by software companies for engagements where the product has to be fitted to each client's systems and documents. Mirage's engineers work this way, in five named steps.

Read more: The complete guide to forward deployed engineering

Checking each carrier invoice against the contract before paying it: the rate for the lane, the fuel surcharge for the week of pickup, the accessorials ordered and their contracted prices, and the times recorded on the delivery documents for detention. Variances are short-paid or disputed with the documents that support them. Errors are small per invoice and frequent, so sampling under-counts them; most teams audit every invoice, by automation or through a provider paid on recoveries.

Read more: Carrier invoice audit calculator

Matching every litre of fuel from delivery to consumption: supplier delivery notes against tank gauge movements, tank issues against pump and bowser logs, pump logs against the hours or kilometres of the equipment that took the fuel. Differences point to metering errors, leaks, theft or unrecorded issues. On a mine site fuel is one of the largest operating costs and the one with the most hand-written records, which is why reconciliation is both valuable and tedious.

Read more: Mine fuel reconciliation guide

The round trip of a haul truck between the loader and the dump or crusher: spot and queue at the loader, loading, travel loaded, dump, return empty. Its duration in minutes, with the payload, sets how many tonnes one truck moves per productive hour, and with availability and utilisation, how many trucks a shift needs. Cycle times are measured by the fleet management system; haul distance, grade, rolling resistance and loader matching are what move them.

Read more: Haul truck fleet sizing calculator

A design in which an automated system hands certain decisions to a person before acting: the agent reads, extracts, compares and proposes, and a reviewer confirms, corrects or rejects. In operations the loop is placed where an error is costly or irreversible: pricing a bid, filing a declaration, creating an order above a threshold, paying an invoice. The share of cases routed to a person, and how long they take, are the two numbers that show whether the loop is working.

Read more: The Mirage platform

The eleven trade terms published by the International Chamber of Commerce that define, in a sale of goods, which party arranges and pays for carriage, insurance, export and import clearance, and where the risk of loss passes from seller to buyer. EXW, FCA, FOB, CIF, DAP and DDP are the most used. The Incoterm decides which costs enter the customs value and which party's invoice should show the freight, so it is the first field a customs declaration or a landed-cost calculation reads.

Read more: Incoterms 2020 checker

In EPC and industrial projects, the extraction of engineering information, not just quantities, from drawings and specifications: tags, line numbers, sizes, materials, ratings, service, insulation class. An ITO feeds the material take-off, procurement and the equipment lists, and it is the step where a wrong attribute propagates furthest. It is usually done per discipline (piping, electrical, instrumentation) on P&IDs, isometrics and data sheets.

Read more: Information take-off for EPC contractors

A model trained on very large amounts of text that reads and writes language and, with the right instructions and context, extracts fields from documents, classifies them, compares them and drafts responses. In an operations agent the LLM is one component: it reads the bid letter or the purchase order, while rules, lookups in the client's systems and a human review step check what it produces. An LLM alone is not an agent; an agent without validation is not safe on a contract.

Read more: OCR vs LLM

The bill of materials derived from a drawing set: for piping, every pipe length, fitting, flange, valve and bolt set per line and specification, counted from isometrics or P&IDs. An MTO is what procurement buys from and what fabrication cuts to, so it carries sizes, schedules, materials and quantities with a margin for waste. It differs from a quantity takeoff by its level of detail and by the specification codes attached to each item.

Read more: Piping takeoff and MTO

The fourth edition of the New Engineering Contract, a family of UK standard forms used widely in British public infrastructure and increasingly abroad. Its defining features are collaborative obligations, early warnings, compensation events notified within fixed periods, and a programme that is updated and accepted throughout the project. Administering an NEC4 contract is largely a matter of notices and deadlines, which is why document discipline decides most disputes under it.

Turning the image of a document into text: the characters on a scanned invoice, a photographed delivery note or a PDF without a text layer. OCR gives the characters, not their meaning; template-based extraction then finds fields at fixed positions, and AI document processing reads them wherever they are. OCR quality depends on the scan, the fonts and the language, and its errors (a 5 read as an S, a dropped decimal) are why extracted figures are validated against other fields and documents.

Read more: OCR vs AI document processing

The contractor's periodic request for payment, usually monthly, built on the schedule of values: for each line, the value completed to date and the materials stored, from which retainage is withheld and previous payments deducted to reach the amount due. In US practice the AIA G702 and G703 forms are the common format; the owner's contract decides the form, the retainage rate and the supporting documents (lien waivers, certified payroll where it applies).

Read more: Pay application calculator

Morocco's national single window for foreign trade, through which importers, exporters, freight forwarders, carriers, banks and the customs administration exchange the documents of a shipment: import undertakings, manifests, the DUM, inspection requests, port and bank documents. A shipment's clearance runs through PortNet steps in sequence, so a document rejected at one step blocks the next; the data entered at each step comes from the commercial documents of the shipment.

Read more: PortNet and DUM automation (in French)

The minimum hourly rate and fringe benefits a contractor must pay each classification of worker on a public works project, set by a wage determination for the locality and the type of construction. In the US the Davis-Bacon Act applies it to federally funded work; many states have their own laws. The basic rate, the fringe credit (with annualization for some benefits) and overtime on the basic rate are the three figures that go wrong most often.

Read more: Davis-Bacon wage calculator

The signed delivery document, paper or electronic, showing that the consignee received the goods: date and time, who signed, the number of packages, and any reservation about condition or shortage. The POD closes the carrier's obligation, starts the payment clock for the shipper's invoice, and is the evidence in a claim. It is also where detention is proven: arrival and release times on the POD are what a detention invoice is checked against.

Read more: Proof of delivery processing

The buyer's document ordering goods or services from a supplier: a PO number, items in the buyer's terms, quantities, prices, delivery dates and conditions. It arrives at the supplier by email, PDF, fax, portal or EDI, and becomes the supplier's sales order once accepted. The two documents describe the same transaction in two companies' systems with different item codes and formats, which is the translation an order-entry clerk or an order-entry agent performs.

Read more: Sales order automation

A formal written question from the contractor to the architect or engineer when the drawings, specifications or other contract documents are unclear, incomplete or in conflict. An RFI cites the sheet, detail and specification section, states the question, often proposes an answer, and records the response and its date. The answer itself does not change the contract; when it changes cost or time it leads to a change order. A log tracks days open and overdue answers.

Read more: RFI template and log

A buyer's request for a price on specified items or services, with quantities, specifications, delivery and terms, sent to one or several suppliers. In manufacturing, answering an RFQ means reading the request, matching items to the catalogue or costing custom ones, applying the customer's price list and conditions, and returning a quote before the deadline. In freight, an RFQ asks carriers to price a lane or a shipment on the same description so quotes can be compared.

Read more: RFQ and quote automation

Software robots that replay a fixed sequence of clicks and keystrokes in applications, as a person would, to move data between systems. RPA works well when the inputs are stable and structured and the rules have no exceptions; it breaks when a document's layout changes or a case needs judgement. It is cheaper and faster to stand up than an AI agent for a high-volume, fully rule-based task, and the wrong tool for documents that arrive in many formats.

Read more: AI agents vs RPA

The record a supplier creates in its ERP when it accepts a customer's purchase order: customer, ship-to address, items with the supplier's own codes, quantities, prices from the agreed price list, requested and confirmed dates, terms. It drives picking, production, shipping and invoicing. Manual order entry is the step where the customer's document is transcribed into the sales order, and where a wrong code, quantity or date becomes a return, a credit note or a late delivery.

Read more: Sales order automation

The breakdown of the contract sum into line items with a value each, agreed before the first payment application and used on every one after: work completed and stored materials are reported line by line against it, so percent complete and the balance to finish can be read per item. A schedule of values that front-loads early work or lumps whole trades into one line makes progress payments hard to check, which is why owners review it before accepting it.

Read more: Schedule of values template

Shop drawings, product data, samples, mix designs or test reports the contractor sends to the design team for review before fabrication or installation, to show that what will be built complies with the contract documents. Each submittal is tied to a specification section, has a review period set by the contract, and comes back approved, approved as noted, revise and resubmit, or rejected. The submittal log counts lead times backwards from the date the item is needed on site.

Read more: Submittal log template

Measuring from the drawings the quantities an estimate needs: counts, lengths, areas and volumes of each item of work, sheet by sheet. A takeoff lists what has to be built; the estimate then prices it. Done by hand with a scale rule, on screen with a takeoff tool, or by an AI agent reading PDF, DWG or IFC files, the quantity must stay traceable to the sheet and detail it came from, because that is what a reviewer checks and what a change order later refers to.

Read more: AI quantity takeoff and estimating

The share of available time a machine actually works: available hours minus operational delays (shift change, blasting clearances, refuelling, meals, waiting at the loader, weather), divided by available hours. Availability is about the machine; utilisation is about the operation. Both come from the fleet management or dispatch system. Low utilisation with high availability means trucks are waiting, which is usually a loader-matching or dispatch problem, not a maintenance one.

Read more: Haul truck fleet sizing calculator

The record a weighbridge produces for each vehicle weighed: date and time, vehicle and trailer identification, gross, tare and net weight, the product, origin and destination, and often the customer or the haulage contractor. In mines and quarries the tickets are the primary record of tonnes shipped, received or moved between sites, and the basis of haulage payments and reconciliation against production and stock. A missing or edited ticket is where losses hide.

Read more: Smart weighbridge