Glossary
VentScan glossary
Plain definitions for the terms VentScan uses. Each one means a specific thing in the product; where a number is an estimate rather than a validated result, the glossary says so.
- Capacity margin
- The headroom between an installed capacity and the load it has to meet, for a given piece of equipment or zone. A negative margin means the load exceeds the capacity. VentScan recalculates it whenever a source changes and shows it with its units.
- Compile
- One run that reconciles the current sources and recalculates the affected consequences, producing a Proof Pack. "Compiling" a project means running that pass; the output is the reconciled state plus the sealed record of how it was reached.
- Cooling load
- The rate of heat, in kW, that the cooling system has to remove from a space to hold its design condition. VentScan's current cooling-load calculation (v1) is an estimate pending engineer review and is labelled as such, not presented as validated.
- Determinism
- The property that the same inputs always produce the same result. VentScan's calculations are deterministic and unit-safe: there is no hidden randomness and no silent default, so a result can be reproduced and checked.
- Diversity factor
- A factor that accounts for loads not all peaking at the same time, so a combined demand is lower than the sum of the parts. Where a calculation applies one, VentScan records the value used rather than burying it in a formula.
- IFC
- Industry Foundation Classes — the open, vendor-neutral data model for building information. VentScan reads HVAC entities from IFC files as one of its sources and matches them across revisions.
- Maturity
- The status of a value or rule: for example demo (illustrative only), or implemented (a tested calculation in the product). Maturity travels with every number so an estimate is never mistaken for a validated result.
- Proof Pack
- The append-only record of a decision: the source values, the recalculated consequence, the evidence, and the engineer's approval, sealed so the decision can be re-examined later. Nothing in a Proof Pack is overwritten.
- Reconciliation
- Comparing the HVAC sources that describe the same project — IFC, schedules, room data — to establish where they agree and flag where they disagree. Reconciliation is what VentScan does before it recalculates anything.
- Revision
- A new version of a source as a project develops. VentScan matches entities across revisions so it can show what changed between versions and recalculate only the consequences that the change affects.
- Source, consequence, evidence
- The three things VentScan keeps connected: the source value an input came from, the consequence recalculated from it, and the evidence that links the two. Keeping them together is what makes a decision traceable.
- Tenant isolation
- Keeping each organisation's project data separate so one customer can never read another's. VentScan enforces it by organisation scope and PostgreSQL row-level security; customer data is not used to train shared models by default.