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Appendix D — Glossary

Ancestor / Heading A parent row in a BOQ or rate table that provides context for the items below it. Ancestors are non-priced rows (quantity = 0 or blank) that carry section or trade labels such as "03. Concrete Works" or "Substructure". Conio reads the full ancestor chain above each leaf item and uses it as part of the matching score.

BOQ (Bill of Quantities) A structured list of all construction work items to be priced, each with a description, quantity, and unit of measurement. The BOQ is the primary input to Conio.

Coverage Analysis An automated step that clusters all matched BOQ items by work type and checks which clusters already have a URA template in the library. Covered clusters (green) do not need seeding; uncovered clusters (amber) will need a template generated. See Coverage Analysis & Template Seeding.

Definitive template link When a rate table is produced by exporting the Template Library (Add to Rate Table), each rate row records the source_template_id that produced it. When a BOQ item is matched to such a rate row and a URA is generated, Conio detects the provenance and adopts the template verbatim (Jaccard score = 1.0, no AI call). See Exporting.

Description facets A structured object attached to a BOQ item or rate row after AI Refine: { work_type, structural_element, material_grade, method }. Used by the Facet matching scoring flag to penalise grade mismatches (e.g. C-20 vs C-25).

Description keywords A set of 5–8 generic, trade-level tokens attached to an item after AI Refine (e.g. concrete, c-25, slab, in-situ). Used by the Keyword enrichment scoring flag to improve match scores when discriminating terms are in parent headings rather than the leaf description.

Facet matching A scoring flag that adds a structured facet sub-score to the leaf similarity step. Applies a −0.4 penalty per conflicting facet field (e.g. material grade mismatch). Requires facets on both the BOQ item and the rate row. See Matcher Scoring Profile.

Jaccard similarity A measure of overlap between two sets of tokens: |A ∩ B| / |A ∪ B|. Used for category-name matching in Coverage Analysis and for template matching in URA generation. Penalises length asymmetry — two sets of very different sizes will score low even with high overlap.

Leaf description The text of a single BOQ or rate table item, excluding its parent headings. For example, the leaf "Excavation in hard rock" under the heading "Substructure > Earthworks" has the leaf text "Excavation in hard rock". Conio stores both the leaf and the full ancestor path separately.

Match status The state of a BOQ item in a scenario:

  • pending — not yet matched
  • auto — matched by Match All (AI); awaiting review
  • approved — confirmed by the user
  • manual — user-entered custom rate, not from the rate table

OH&P (Overheads & Profit) A percentage added to the direct cost of a URA to produce the unit rate: Total Rate = Direct Cost × (1 + OH&P% / 100). Set project-wide in Settings and overridable per item.

Overlap coefficient A similarity measure: |A ∩ B| / min(|A|, |B|). Unlike Jaccard, it is immune to length asymmetry — a short set is scored only on how well its tokens are covered by the longer set. Used for the Overlap scorer flag and in Coverage Analysis (description signal).

Price book A project resource library containing unit rates for materials, labour, and equipment. The AI generates quantities and crew configurations; all prices come from the price book. One book can be set as the Active Price Book for a project.

Rate table A list of work items with their unit rates. Each BOQ item is matched to the most appropriate entry in the rate table to produce a priced bill. Conio imports rate tables from Excel or CSV, or generates them from the Template Library.

Scenario A pairing of one BOQ table with one rate table within a project. All matching decisions, URAs, and cost calculations belong to a scenario. One project can have many scenarios.

Template A pre-verified URA resource breakdown stored in the Template Library for a known work type. Templates are reused at generation time to ensure consistency across all items of the same trade. See Template Library.

Template tier The level at which the Template Library is used when generating a URA:

  • Definitive (score 1.0, provenance link): adopted verbatim, no AI
  • Baseline (score ≥ 0.65): AI adjusts quantities only
  • Starting point (score 0.30–0.65): AI modifies the recipe
  • Cold (score < 0.30): generated from scratch

URA (Unit Rate Analysis) A structured breakdown of the direct cost of one unit of a BOQ work item: materials consumed, labour hours, and equipment hours, each priced from the resource price book. The total of direct costs plus OH&P gives the unit rate used for pricing the BOQ.