Glossary

One glossary, serving both companies. Half its value is the mapping between the two vocabularies — a Bristlecone reader meets Billing Items in the financial rules, a Story reader meets Submittals in older records — so unlike most pages here it does not follow the header switch. Where a term exists in only one instance, the entry says so.

Company and structure

KI (Kinetic Intelligence) — Our ERP (enterprise resource planning) system: one product that Story and Bristlecone Construction each run separately. Within a company it is several interfaces over that company’s one database.

Story — The residential renovation and remodelling company; design-led, and the reason KI carries a design phase at all.

Bristlecone Construction — The construction company: commercial, institutional and multifamily work, run as separate lines of business. A sibling of Story, not a division of it, running its own instance of KI.

Instance — One company’s KI: its own database, configuration, features in use, and QuickBooks company. Work done in one instance does not appear in the other, and the two have drifted since they were set up, so they no longer hold exactly the same things.

Division — How a company subdivides itself for reporting, and the two answer it differently: Story’s are its offices split by discipline — Dallas, Denver or Scottsdale, each with a Design, a Construction and an Overhead Division — and Bristlecone’s are its lines of business, Bristlecone GC and Bristlecone Concrete. Every project lives in exactly one. Financial reporting rolls up to this level. Set up in Legacy KI Admin Setup, and equivalent to a Class in QuickBooks — all costs, revenue, and payroll post in the Class matching the project’s Division.

Story Design Studio — A marketing tool on Story’s public website that returns AI-generated design images from a client’s photos. Not part of KI, and Story’s alone.

Master Agreement — The agreement every subcontractor providing labour must have with us. It is held at company level, not per project, so one signed Master Agreement covers that subcontractor on every job. Along with a current Certificate of Insurance, it is part of the compliance a subcontractor must satisfy before it is paid.

Subcontractor compliance — The general term for keeping a subcontractor’s paperwork current and on file: signed Master Agreement, insurance certificates, W-9, and similar items. Tracked in the Companies module at company level, and checked before payment.

The interfaces

Admin Portal — Where most Story employees work: project setup, the phases, and project financials. Not in use on Bristlecone’s instance yet.

Legacy KI — The older admin portal. It points at the same database as every other interface, so work done there is live data rather than an archive. Story still runs pricing proposals, Admin Setup and all of Accounting there; Bristlecone runs everything there. It is the interface the Admin Portal is being ported from, module by module.

Client Portal — What a client sees of their own project: packages to approve, contracts to sign, invoices to pay, issues to log. Story only; not set up on Bristlecone’s instance.

Vendor Portal — Where a vendor receives a purchase order and approves changes to it. That is all it does today. Story only.

Field App — The iPad app site teams use for project updates, issues, time entry and the current plan set. Story only; Bristlecone runs field work in Autodesk.

Autodesk — Where Bristlecone’s field management, submittals and daily logs are captured. Not part of KI.

CRM (customer relationship management) — The system sales works leads in before a project exists. Story’s is Active Campaign; it is a replaceable source, and a lead crosses into KI as a Project Record at the job walk stage.

Project and design

Project Record — The container for one client’s project. Created when a lead in the CRM (customer relationship management) reaches the job walk stage. Legacy KI: Lead.

Project Scope — What we have been engaged to do. Story: Design Build, Design Only, Build Only, Interiors Only, Furniture Only, or Story Select. Bristlecone builds to drawings produced elsewhere and has no scope branch.

Project Phase — Where a project stands in its scope’s sequence. Design Build: Project Proposal → Visioning → Final Design → Build. Design Only and Interiors Only: Project Proposal → Visioning → Final Design. Build Only: Project Proposal → final design documents → Build. Furniture Only: Project Proposal → Design Discovery → Final Proposal. Story Select: Project Proposal → Final Design → Build. See section 6.3.

Project Progress Tracker — The task list for the current phase in the Admin Portal, with the controls that advance a project between phases.

Visioning — Phase 2 of a Design Build project. Questionnaires, as-builts, the design kick-off meeting, and the visioning presentation.

As-builts — The site visit that produces accurate measurements and a documented record of existing conditions.

Visioning package — The PDF presented at the end of Phase 2: floor plans, imagery, renderings, elevations, and an updated construction proposal.

Final design package — One or more PDFs containing the complete drawing set and the final price. The basis of the Construction Contract.

Showroom visit — A scheduled visit during Phase 3, carrying a date, time, address, and named contact.

Money

Proposal — The client-facing PDF containing marketing, sales, and project content plus construction pricing. Construction pricing at this stage is a budget, not a price.

Estimate — The priced build-up behind a proposal, created in Legacy KI, broken out by Cost Code with markups applied. Legacy KI: Proposal.

Spreading — Distributing general conditions, general requirements, supervisory labour and markup into a proposal’s line items rather than showing them as separate rows. Every Estimate generates two PDFs: a Proposal (No Spread), logged internally and never emailed, and a spread Proposal, which is the client-facing document.

Contract — A signed agreement inside a Project Record. A Story Design Build project has two, Design and Construction; every other scope, and every Bristlecone project, has one. Drafted outside KI, uploaded as a PDF, and — on Story’s instance — signed by e-signature in the Client Portal. Legacy KI: Project.

Billing Items — The schedule of how a contract will be billed. Must sum to the contract amount; one is the deposit. This is what commercial contracting calls a schedule of values.

Budget Adjustment — The allocation of contract dollars to Cost Codes. Internal adjustments net to zero; change order adjustments equal the change order amount.

Cost Code — The standard cost category used to budget, commit, and record job costs. Shared across the business; set up in Legacy KI Admin Setup. Custom codes can be added per project and function identically.

Fee — The contract amount less the Cost Code budgets. Our margin on the contract.

Commitment — Dollars committed to a vendor or subcontractor, shown against budget in Cost Control. On Story’s instance a commitment comes from a Purchase Order and is that order plus any change orders written against it; on Bristlecone’s it is a Commitment record carrying the signed subcontract.

Forecast — The margin analysis on a project: budgets, costs, and commitments read forward to a projected final cost. Forecast and margin are the same thing under two names, and it is stored under Cost Control.

Pay Application — The periodic invoice, created by entering percent complete against the Billing Items.

Change Order — A priced change to a signed contract, carrying matching Billing Item and Budget Adjustment changes. On Story’s instance its only status is executed — approval and execution are the same event, the client signs it in the Client Portal, and one cannot be created unless a client contact is identified as the change order approver.

Change Estimate — A priced change worked up, negotiated, and where a subcontractor is involved priced against their number, before it becomes a Change Order. Bristlecone only; on Story’s instance a Change Order is created directly.

Purchase Order — The document issued to a vendor, coded to the project and a Cost Code, that creates a commitment. It can be changed after issue by a change order written against it, which the vendor approves in the Vendor Portal. Story only; Bristlecone has no Purchase Orders screen.

Retention — A percentage of each payment withheld until the work is accepted. Used on Bristlecone’s instance. It exists in KI but is not switched on for Story, so no Story billing is withheld against it.

WIP (Work In Progress) — Revenue earned but not yet billed, or the reverse. Run by Division and contract grouping, and posted to QuickBooks with a reversing entry. The Division gives the Class; the contract grouping gives the Design or Construction revenue and COGS (cost of goods sold) accounts.

Class — QuickBooks’ segment dimension. One Class per Division, so a project’s Division decides the Class its costs, revenue, and payroll post to.

GL Code — General ledger account, used for journal entries and for overhead employees not charged to jobs. Comes from QuickBooks.

Work and communication

Issue — A tracked question or problem on a project, internal or client-facing, typed by what it concerns — design, construction, quality, project controls, or client request. On Story’s instance it carries a response path in both directions and absorbs what a request for information (RFI) used to do; on Bristlecone’s, Issues and RFIs are separate modules.

Project Update — A dated post with photos and written notes, made mostly from the Field App, shown to the client. Legacy KI: Daily Log.

Milestone — A key date on the project schedule — permit issued, demolition complete, rough-in done, substantial completion — carrying a target date and an actual date, with changes recorded as they happen.

Safety inspection — A monthly jobsite checklist walk of the jobsite. On Story’s instance it is recorded either in the Admin Portal or in the Field App on an iPad, against the same record.

Safety Concern — A checklist item answered unsafe on a safety inspection, which becomes an outstanding item against the project when the inspection is completed and stays outstanding until somebody records how it was corrected. Not an Issue: concerns come only from an inspection and are tracked only on the safety screen.

Communications tab — The log of every message the system has sent the client, with delivery and open status.

Forms — The company-wide module where forms are built, including the visioning questionnaires.

Roles

Project Planner — Owns the financials of the project: pricing, procurement, margin, and change orders. Some Admin Portal and Client Portal screens still display Planning Manager, which is a known defect rather than a second valid name.

Design Manager — Owns the design process through its phases. Sometimes called the Design PM; Design Manager is the name to use.

Site Manager — Runs the work on site.

Interior Designer — Produces the design.

Client — The homeowner. Called the owner on some screens, a construction convention where the party paying for the work owns the building.

Vendor — A supplier or trade responding to purchase orders.

Terms you may still hear

Words that are not KI objects, kept here because they appear in older records, in industry documents, and in conversation. Each entry says what KI calls the thing instead, or which instance it belongs to.

Quote — Not a KI object. The priced build-up is an Estimate; the document that goes to the client is a Proposal. Older pages on this site used quote for both, which is why the word still turns up.

Bid — In Story’s vocabulary, another word for an Estimate. On Bristlecone’s instance bidding is a real motion: subcontractors are invited to bid and their numbers are compared in bid tabulation.

Schedule of Values — The commercial contracting name for the contract broken into billable line items. In KI this is Billing Items.

Draw — A progress billing. In KI this is a Pay Application.

Schematic Design, Design Development — Standard architectural stages. They are not KI phases and the software does not track them; the Design Build sequence is Project Proposal → Visioning → Final Design → Build.

Selection — Choosing a specific material or finish: tile, fixtures, paint, hardware, cabinetry. Settled during the finish presentation in Phase 3. There is no selections module in KI today, and the Legacy KI material catalog is present but unused.

Request for Information (RFI) — A formal question from the contractor to the architect or owner. On Story’s instance this is an Issue, which also carries questions in the other direction. On Bristlecone’s it is its own module and still means exactly what it always did.

Submittal — A proposal to use a specific product or material, sent for approval before purchase. A Legacy KI module on Bristlecone’s instance; off on Story’s.

Transmittal — The formal record of documents handed from one party to another: who sent what, to whom, when. Bristlecone only.

Invitation to Bid (ITB) — A request to subcontractors to bid on a scope. Bristlecone only.

Bid tabulation — Comparing subcontractor bids side by side to pick winners. Bristlecone only.

Punch list — The closeout list of remaining defects and unfinished items. On Story’s instance these are Issues of type quality, tracked until closed, with no separate record; on Bristlecone’s the Punch List is its own Legacy KI module.

Daily Log — The dated record of one day on one project: weather, who was on site, conditions, issues, and quality observations. This is what the module is called in Legacy KI; in Story’s Admin Portal the same record is a Project Update.

CPM Schedule — Critical Path Method. A schedule showing which tasks determine the finish date. Used on Bristlecone’s instance; Story tracks milestones on the project Schedule instead.

Four-Week Look-Ahead — A short-range schedule of what is coming in the next month. Bristlecone only.

Job Hazard Analysis (JHA) — A documented review of task risks before work starts. Used on Bristlecone’s instance; Story tracks jobsite safety through monthly inspections and the jobsite safety plan instead.

Certificate of Insurance (COI) — Proof a subcontractor carries required coverage. Tracked in the Companies module as part of subcontractor compliance, alongside the Master Agreement.

Knotty Iron — A former name of KI, not a system and not the same thing as Legacy KI. See the FAQ.

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