Reference
Lexicon
Practice terms as their governing authorities define them, and a general English dictionary, both searchable here.
The practice terms are quoted, never written here. The firm curates this lexicon rather than composing it: a definition published by a permit holder invites reliance on it, so the wording belongs to whoever issued it. Where a term is defined differently in Alberta and British Columbia, both readings will appear under the term.
Sources come in two tiers, and every entry names which it is. Where a standard, a statute, or a guidance document defines a term, that wording is used and the document is cited. Where none does, the entry carries a general lexical definition from Open English WordNet, which is a dictionary and not an authority on professional practice. A reader deciding what a term means on a project should work from the first tier, and treat the second as orientation.
The general dictionary is a separate body of reference held under a separate tab. It is a public-domain-equivalent resource carried here for convenience, and it makes no claim on the firm's practice.
About these sources
- Governing authorities
- Published standards, guidance, and statutes, quoted with the clause or page cited and linked to the issuing body's document where one is posted. These are the entries that carry weight on a project.
- Lexical definitions
- Terms with no governing definition carry an Open English WordNet sense, marked as such in the citation line. They are included so the vocabulary of the practice is covered end to end, not because a dictionary settles a professional question.
- Coverage
- The lexicon follows the vocabulary, not the alphabet. Some letters carry a great deal of it and some carry almost none: there is no body of hydrotechnical terms beginning with X, Y, or Z, and padding those letters with unrelated words would make the reference worse.
- English dictionary
- Open English WordNet 2024, 150,179 headwords across 120,630 sense groups, used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Sense content is reproduced without modification. The licence and attribution travel with the data on this server.
- Not the Oxford English Dictionary
- The OED is licensed commercially by Oxford University Press and cannot be republished here. Open English WordNet is the closest freely licensed equivalent of comparable coverage.
Definitions are reproduced for reference. A term as it is applied on a project depends on the instrument in force, the jurisdiction, and the facts of the site, and nothing here is a professional opinion. The standards these terms are drawn from are listed in References.