Glossary of construction readiness, execution-risk, and recovery terms.

Project execution plan (PEP)

The owner's written plan for how the project will be delivered: contracting approach, organization, schedule basis, procurement strategy, and the assumptions behind each. It is approved long before the field exists, which is why the construction portion of it is worth testing against field conditions rather than accepted as a statement of fact.

Execution plan review before sanction

Construction execution plan (CEP)

The contractor's plan for building the work: sequence, work packaging, craft histogram, supervision structure, indirects, temporary facilities, and logistics. A sound plan states what has to be true for the sequence to hold. A weak one states intent. The difference shows up in the first congested month, not in the document.

Execution plan review

FID (final investment decision) and sanction

The point at which an owner or sponsor commits capital to build. Sanction converts a plan into an obligation, so the delivery basis behind it — schedule, estimate, craft assumption, contracting structure — becomes very difficult to change afterwards. Testing that basis before the decision is cheaper than discovering it in the field.

Advisory for owners and sponsors

Sponsor

The party whose capital and reputation carry the project, usually the owner or developer and its board. The sponsor cannot delegate the decision to commit funds, the decision to release the field to build, or the decision to change course. Independent measurement exists to inform those three decisions, not to make them.

Advisory for owners and sponsors

EPC, EPCM, and multi-prime

Three ways to structure delivery. Under EPC, one contractor holds a single scope and price. Under EPCM, a managing contractor coordinates trade contracts the owner holds. Multi-prime means the owner holds several major contracts directly. Each allocates craft-shortage and interface risk differently, which is a construction question before it is a commercial one.

Contracting and craft strategy review

Constructability of the bid

Whether the work can physically be built in the order, density, and duration the bid assumes, with the craft the region can supply. A price can be arithmetically correct and still not constructible. The test is not the total; it is the sequence, the access, the crew sizes, and the hours per unit behind it.

Bid execution review

Estimate reasonableness

A field test of the numbers: quantities-to-hours logic, productivity factors, crew composition, indirect ratios, and the allowances carried for weather, access, and rework. Reasonableness is not benchmarking against a database. It is asking whether these hours can be produced by these crews under the conditions this site will actually have.

Estimate and schedule reasonableness review

Schedule density

How much work the schedule expects in a given area, system, or month. Dense periods look acceptable at project level and fail at work-front level, because crews cannot occupy the same space, cranes cannot serve every lift, and permits cannot be issued fast enough. Density is where most schedules quietly become unachievable.

Critical-path realism

Whether the driving path reflects how the work will actually be built. Common failures are missing logic, activities that assume simultaneous access, durations set to fit a date rather than a rate, and commissioning shown as a single bar. A path that cannot be walked on site is not a critical path.

Float

The time an activity can slip before it moves a milestone. Float is only as real as the logic that produces it, and it is often consumed before construction starts by late documents, late materials, or late access. Where a project reports comfortable float and misses monthly targets, the logic deserves attention.

Craft histogram

The planned number of craft workers by trade over time, including the peak. A histogram is an assumption about a regional labor market at a specific date, not a resource that has been secured. The useful question is whether that peak exists nearby, by trade, at that wage, against everything else being built.

Craft capability measured by trade

Craft density

The number of workers occupying a given area or system at once. Above a certain density, adding people reduces output: crews wait on access, scaffold, and each other. Density limits are physical, and they are usually reached earlier than the plan assumes, particularly in brownfield and modular interface areas.

Proven-capable craft

Workers who have demonstrated they can do this specific work to this standard, not simply people who have been hired. On procedure-heavy scope the difference is measurable in first-time weld pass rates and rework. Headcount can be met while capability is not, which is why capability is measured by trade.

Craft capability measured by trade

Hands-on performance verification

Confirming capability by observing the work itself: testing and qualifying trades early, watching crews at the work front, and comparing output with the rate the plan assumes. It replaces assurance built from certificates and interviews with evidence taken from the field, where the assumption will eventually be settled anyway.

How the review is done

Supervision ratio

The number of craft workers per foreman and general foreman. Every productivity assumption carries one. Ratios stretch quietly during ramp-up because supervision is harder to hire than craft, and stretched supervision shows up as rework, waiting time, and safety pressure before it shows up in the progress report.

Site leadership and supervision

Indirects

The staff and support that make direct work possible: supervision, planning, materials control, quality, safety, warehousing, transport, and site services. Indirects are cut first under bid pressure and missed first in execution. A thin indirect plan usually costs more in lost craft hours than it saved in the estimate.

Temporary facilities

Everything built to build the project: site power and lighting, water, offices, change facilities, warehousing, laydown, roads, fencing, camps, and transport. These are scheduled last and needed first. When they arrive late, craft productivity is affected from the first week, and the loss is rarely recovered later.

Laydown

The prepared area where materials, modules, and equipment are received, stored, and staged before installation. Undersized or badly sequenced laydown forces double handling, blocks access, and turns crane time into logistics time. It is a physical constraint that can be measured before mobilization rather than discovered during it.

Mobilization

The point at which the construction workforce, supervision, and site services arrive and the field is released to build. Mobilizing into an unready site is the most expensive avoidable decision on a project, because idle craft hours cannot be recovered and early sequence loss compounds through the peak.

Ten-day construction readiness assessment

Construction readiness assessment

A structured, independent test of whether the field can carry the plan, conducted on site over a fixed period against defined gates. It reports observed condition against the plan, ranks the gaps, and states what has to be true before the next commitment. It is a measurement and an opinion, not a direction to the project.

The ten-day assessment

Readiness gate

A defined condition that must be satisfied before work should proceed: work packages complete, materials on site, access and laydown ready, supervision hired, craft available and capable, permits in place, commissioning organization staffed. Gates make readiness a physical test with a yes or no answer rather than a status colour.

The readiness gates

Work-front readiness

Whether the crew arriving at a specific location tomorrow morning can work a full shift: drawings issued, materials staged, access and scaffold in place, permits obtained, preceding work complete, tools and equipment available. Readiness measured anywhere other than the work front tends to describe intent rather than condition.

Work package

A defined scope of work with its drawings, materials, quantities, hours, and sequence gathered in one place so a crew can execute it without hunting for information. Packaging discipline is one of the strongest signals of construction maturity, and the absence of it is visible on site within hours.

Installation work package

A work package built for the crew at the work front: the specific installation scope, the exact material list, the access and scaffold requirement, the permit, the quality checks, and the hours allowed. Where these exist and are complete, productivity assumptions become defensible. Where they do not, they are guesses.

Rules of credit

The agreed method for claiming partial completion of an activity, for example percentages for receiving, setting, aligning, welding, and testing a spool. Rules of credit drift under schedule pressure, front-loading credit for easy steps. When reported progress and field condition separate, drifted rules are usually part of the reason.

Progress verification

Earned value

A reporting method that compares work performed with work planned and cost incurred. Its usefulness depends entirely on the quality of the quantities, the baseline, and the rules of credit beneath it. Earned value calculated on optimistic inputs produces confident numbers that describe a project nobody would recognize on site.

Progress verification

Independent comparison of reported progress with physical condition: walking the work, counting what is installed and tested, testing rules of credit, and checking whether the forecast is supported by achieved rates. It answers where the project actually is, which is the first question in any recovery or funding conversation.

Progress verification

Independent construction monitor

The independent party who verifies physical progress and forecast for a lender, board, or insurer, and reports on an agreed cadence. Torvane provides this as advisory monitoring only: it observes, verifies, and reports. It does not direct construction, certify payment, approve draws, or accept quality.

Independent Construction Monitor

Project diagnostic

A short independent examination of a project's condition when reported status is no longer trusted: what is installed, what is packaged and ready, what is blocking the crews on site, and what productivity has actually been achieved. A diagnostic states the condition. It does not yet propose a plan.

Project condition diagnostic

Recovery assessment

An assessment of a project that is already behind, covering condition, causes still active, and the options available with what each requires and costs. The value is in honesty about achieved rates: a recovery built on productivity the project has never produced restates the same date a second time.

Recovery options diagnostic

Recovery plan

The client's plan to return a project to a defensible date, usually involving resequencing, added or better-supervised craft, work-package repair, and revised commitments. Torvane can test a recovery plan against observed field capability and report where it is unsupported. The client owns the plan and runs it.

Governance seat

An advisory place at the table where project decisions are reviewed, giving a sponsor or board independent construction insight alongside the reporting it receives from the delivery parties. It is an advisory role only: no authority over the work, no approvals, no direction to contractors, no decisions taken on the client's behalf.

Gate test

The act of checking a readiness gate against observed evidence and recording a plain result with the basis for it. A gate test produces a yes, a no, or a specific condition to be met, not a score. Its purpose is to make the next decision a choice rather than a hope.

The evidence standard

Project labor agreement

A pre-hire agreement setting wages, work rules, and dispute procedures for a project, typically with building-trades unions. It affects craft availability, mobility between projects, shift and overtime patterns, and how quickly a workforce can be built. It is a construction planning input, not only a commercial or relations matter.

Labor strategy review

Systemization

Reorganizing the work from areas into systems and subsystems so it can be tested, handed over, and started up in a logical order. Projects that systemize late discover that construction completed by area does not turn over by system, and the start-up date moves while everything looks finished.

Commissioning and turnover readiness

Turnover package

The documentation that transfers a system from construction to commissioning and then to operations: test records, certificates, punch status, and as-built information. Built as work completes, packages are a by-product. Built afterwards, they become a project of their own, and they sit directly on the start-up date.

Turnover readiness

Commissioning readiness

Whether the project can actually begin checkout and start-up: systemization complete, turnover packages current, commissioning organization staffed and on site, checkout sequences agreed with operations, punch volume clearing faster than it is written, and the boundaries between construction, commissioning, and operations written down and understood.

Commissioning readiness

First fire and first gas

The first operating milestones on power and LNG projects: introducing fuel and firing equipment, and producing the first liquefied cargo. Both are system milestones rather than area milestones, so they are reached through completed, tested, and documented systems, never through construction that merely looks finished.

LNG readiness

Simultaneous operations (SIMOPS)

Construction carried out alongside operating or commissioned plant, governed by permits, isolations, gas testing, escorts, and access rules set by operations. SIMOPS reduces achievable productivity in ways greenfield estimates do not reflect, and access can be withdrawn for reasons that have nothing to do with the project.

Petrochemical readiness

Reliance letter

A written arrangement permitting named third parties, such as a syndicate, investment committee, or board, to rely on a report addressed to the client. Scope and limits are stated. Torvane arranges reliance in the engagement letter before work begins, and issues no certifications or legal opinions of any kind.

Reliance and reporting

Torvane (the soil instrument)

A hand instrument pressed into soil to measure its shear strength before load is applied. It gives a direct reading of whether the ground can carry what is about to be placed on it. The firm is named for it because the same discipline applies to construction plans: measure the ground before you add load.

About the firm and the name