Terminology and Acronyms

Who can tell me what ERP, MRP, SANG, PICNIC, BNG, Reg 19, expenses Vs. expenditure, Reserved matters, allocation, adoption means?

We go through life with acronyms and role specific terminology defining the context of the debate, determining your knowledge undermining your credibility (don’t use formula when you should be using recipe or BOM).   Using these shortcuts makes professional conversations faster (if everyone knows the nuances of the definition) but makes access harder for laypeople.  It also makes it extremely difficult to negotiate in a professionals world when you are a fundamental cog in their development wheel.

This is where Dad and I found ourselves yesterday, battered by acronyms and tortured by terminology.  I can’t remember the number of times that we needed to ask “what does that mean?” Just to be able to follow the conversation, let alone influence it in a way that suits our best interests.  We were grateful for the patience of all involved in the conversation and couldn’t have navigated it without help from John and Alistair (our agents).  Thank you both.

The discussion related to the forthcoming development and to say that we felt drained afterwards is an understatement.  We have a lot of thinking to do!

“Get to the point of this ramble Mike!” (I think I can hear you saying it anyway).  My point is that under some circumstances acronyms help accelerate discussion but in other circumstances distract from the depth of discussion and cause unnecessary intellectual drain.  I believe that we must always strive to be clear in our communication and make sure that everyone has the same understanding of a word/definition before conversations too far.

So… Can anyone tell me what all the above acronyms mean (I used them all yesterday)?  And do you have any of your own to add to the list of confusion?