UpScale.buildProperty Development Glossary
No jargon walls. No textbook definitions. Practical explanations of the terms that matter when you're running a development.
Longer walkthroughs live on the blog— feasibility, variations, and progress claims. UpScale is in early access; start free with no card required.
Feasibility
Feasibility Study
A feasibility study is a financial analysis that determines whether a property development project will generate an acceptable return before committing capital.
Preliminaries (Construction)
Preliminaries are the time-related overhead costs of running a construction project — site establishment, supervision, insurance, temporary services, and project management — that aren't tied to specific building work.
Development Margin
Development margin is the profit from a property development expressed as a percentage of total development costs or gross realisation, measuring the financial return on the project.
Subdivision Feasibility
A subdivision feasibility study tests whether splitting a site into separate lots and selling them will cover the planning, civil works, service authority and registration costs involved, with enough profit left over to justify the deal.
Developer Contributions
Developer contributions are monetary contributions a council charges against a development consent to help fund local infrastructure, calculated under the council's own contributions plan as either a section 7.11 contribution or a section 7.12 levy.
Strata Subdivision
Strata subdivision divides a building into separately owned lots and shared common property under a registered strata plan, and in NSW the registration of that plan creates an owners corporation that the developer runs, funds and insures during the initial period, which ends once one third of the unit entitlements have sold.
GST Margin Scheme
The GST margin scheme is a method, set out in Australian GST law, for working out the GST on a property sale as one eleventh of the margin between the sale price and the property's purchase price or an approved valuation, instead of one eleventh of the full sale price.
Project Delivery
Progress Claims
A progress claim is a contractor's formal request for payment for work completed during a specific period on a construction project.
Variations (Construction)
A variation is a change to the original scope, cost, or timeline of a construction contract, formally documented and requiring approval before work proceeds.
Site Diary
A site diary is a daily record of activities, conditions, and events on a construction site, serving as a contemporaneous log for project management and dispute resolution.
Practical Completion
Practical completion is the contractual milestone when a building is sufficiently complete for its intended purpose, triggering key obligations like defects liability and final payment.
Retention (Construction)
Retention is a percentage of each progress payment withheld by the principal as security against defective work, typically released in two stages — at practical completion and at the end of the defects liability period.
RFI (Request for Information)
An RFI (Request for Information) is a formal written query a head contractor raises during construction, asking the client side to clarify a gap, conflict or ambiguity in the design, specification or contract documents before work can proceed.
Construction Meeting Minutes
Construction meeting minutes are the dated, numbered record of what was discussed, decided and actioned at a project meeting — a contract-administration document, not a set of personal notes.
Procurement
Tender Process
The tender process is the structured method of inviting, receiving, evaluating, and awarding contractor bids for construction work packages.
Scope of Works
A scope of works is a detailed document defining exactly what work is included in a construction contract — materials, methods, quality standards, and exclusions — forming the basis for pricing and delivery.
Risk & Compliance
Extension of Time (EOT)
An extension of time is a formal claim by a contractor for additional time to complete the works due to qualifying causes of delay beyond their control.
Defects Liability Period
The defects liability period (DLP) is a contractually defined period after practical completion during which the contractor is obligated to return and rectify any defects that become apparent.
Payment Schedule (Security of Payment)
A payment schedule is the written notice a respondent must give a claimant under the Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 1999 (NSW), stating what they will pay against a payment claim and, if it is less than claimed, why.
Guides & tools
Longer pages that answer one question end to end, and the calculators that answer one number.
- Feasibility software for Australian developers — what to look for, and what a feaso tool does after the site is bought.
- Site diary app for property developers — the daily record that an extension-of-time claim is argued from.
- Margin through variations and claims — keeping one cost position against the budget you underwrote.
- Construction project management software — The client side of a build in one record: tenders, contracts, claims, variations, RFIs, meetings, diary, defects and approvals.
- Construction cost management software — Budget, committed, certified and paid on one screen, measured against the original budget the project was funded on.
- GST margin scheme calculator — GST under the margin scheme against 1/11th of the price, plus the eligibility and withholding questions that decide which one you pay.
- Development site stamp duty calculator — Transfer duty and the foreign purchaser surcharge on a development site in NSW, VIC, QLD or WA, on the published revenue-office scales.
- NSW land tax calculator — What a development site costs you to hold each year: NSW land tax on the published thresholds, plus the foreign owner surcharge.
- Residual land value calculator — The most you could bid for a site and still hit your target margin, solved against the same appraisal engine the product runs.
- Quick feasibility calculator — Screen a site from ten numbers: margin on cost, profit, peak funding and the month funding peaks. Everything is computed in your browser.
- Construction templates — progress claim, variation, RFI, scope of works and meeting minutes — explained, with the file to download.
Put the glossary into practice
UpScale keeps feasibility, cost control, claims, and variations in one live workspace for Australian developers — not another spreadsheet stack.