Restoration Industry Terminology
Clear, concise communication relies on a common understanding of terms. Disagreement over word definitions in contracts, scopes of work, estimates, reports, and invoices leads to conflict that too often has to be resolved by legal proceedings. Suppliers, insurance adjusters, consultants, clients, and contractors have, at times, spoken different languages. Similarly, regions of the country have adopted certain terms and definitions unfamiliar to industry participants in other areas. Today, our society is more litigious than ever and many restoration industry participants work coast-to-coast. Contractors, regardless of market, are learning new terms and different definitions for known terms. The importance of an accepted glossary of industry terminology has never been more important; because whenever two parties dispute the meaning of term, the one that has relied on an accepted standard definition has a far greater chance of prevailing.
RIA has developed a dictionary of industry terms for purposes of establishing a common understanding of language to be used in contracts, scopes of work, estimates, reports, and invoices. We encourage review and comment from industry participants and the public at large. Please share with other interested parties and invite their feedback. As the dictionary of Restoration Industry Terminology expands and becomes more refined, disputes over the meaning of terms used in the project documents will be more easily settled. Before logging in, please review the list of terms included in the dictionary by clicking here. Once you have had a chance to familiarize yourself with the terms defined, click here to login into our online discussion forum.
Once you have logged into the site, you can then search through the words and add any comments or concerns you may have by clicking “Add New Comment” on the desired term. Each comment will be reviewed and taken into consideration by the task force and replies to comments will be posted.
For a pdf version of the list of terms, click here.
