Mock-Up
A full-scale sample of a building assembly, such as a section of exterior wall, a typical hotel room, or a curtain wall corner, built and approved before that assembly is constructed throughout the rest of the project, used to verify appearance, quality, and performance while changes are still cheap to make.
Why it matters
Discovering that a brick pattern or window installation detail doesn't look or perform right after it's been repeated across an entire building's facade is far more expensive to fix than catching it in a single approved sample first.
On a real project
Before a hotel's exterior brick veneer work begins, the mason builds a 10-foot-square mock-up panel showing the exact brick pattern, mortar color, and control joint spacing. The architect and owner review and approve it on-site, and that approved panel becomes the standard every subsequent wall is compared against.
Who this matters most to
A Quality Control Manager tracks mock-up approvals as a required milestone before full production work on that assembly can start. A Superintendent coordinates building the mock-up itself, usually with the actual subcontractor and materials that will be used for the real work, so the approved sample is a true representation of what's coming.
Where this goes wrong
A contractor builds a mock-up using a subcontractor's best installer, gets it approved, then has different, less experienced installers execute the actual work across the building. The quality gap between the approved mock-up and the real installation becomes an ongoing dispute with the architect, who expected every wall to match the sample that was actually approved.