(By Melanie Stone)

Does the title of the post leave you scratching your head? You are not alone. We are drowning in the world of acronyms. And I am not even talking about all the LOLs that came to life in text with the advent of Morse-code-style digital communication of the younger, hipper generation. I am talking about our industry – the industry of serious people with serious jobs – the world of FIM/IWMS. If you don’t know what that is, read on.

Having grown up in the engineering industry in the age of CAD, a burgeoning data management movement, and the expansion of BIM, I am surrounded by acronyms. We could speak to each other in industry code alone, moving the conversation along swiftly, and no one else would understand us. And yet, it appears to be not enough. Acronyms keep proliferating.

It seems that every time I see someone write, or hear someone speak, about my line of work, they’d say something to the effect of “This could be better described by [insert a totally new and completely unnecessary acronym here].”

If you have ever found yourself typing or uttering those words, just stop yourself, please. We do have enough. We have been acronymized sufficiently. Yes, it is a made-up word too.

The point is, despite my exasperation with a self-propagating list of acronyms, the industry is full of long and complicated phrases, and acronyms do help. Just take the title of this post as an example. What does “TLA/FLAs for FIM/IWMS” mean? Three Letter Acronyms/Four Letter Acronyms for Facilities Information Management and Integrated Workplace Management Systems. Isn’t it nicer to be able to say that in far fewer letters than the original mouthful would require?

To that end, I have collected a list of the most useful acronyms I come across often in my work for your reference.

And there you have it (shall we avoid copyrighting it as ATYHI?) – a list of most used acronyms useful in my work. Love them or hate them, they provide talking shortcuts for phrases that would otherwise trip us up and extend our conversations to triple-time. Next time you have a conversation about modern engineering and facilities management, you’ll be much better equipped to understand and use the acronyms that will inevitably punctuate your professional exchanges. [Just don’t add to the list ;)]

About the Author: Melanie Stone is an Application Engineer at ROI Consulting Group, responsible for CAD and data management. She launched her blog, “Mistress of Dorkness,” to continue promoting the collaborative spirit of user groups she encountered at the Autodesk University conference.