TxDOT Glossary: W

Waco District: WAC; The Waco District is a TxDOT district office including the following counties: Bell, Bosque, Coryell, Falls, Hamilton, Hill, Limestone, and McLennan. Area offices are located in Belton, Gatesville, Hillsboro, Marlin, and Waco. Maintenance offices are located in Belton, Killeen, Gatesville, Hamilton, Hillsboro, Meridian, Marlin, Mexia, and Waco.; Inside TxDOT

waived project: A waived project is a Construction or Maintenance project which does not require the submission of audited financial statements.; Bidder’s Questionnaire

wale: A wale is a guide or brace of steel or timber, used in trenches and other construction.; Geotechnical Manual

wall-to-wall inventory: A wall-to-wall inventory occurs when all stock items are inventoried within a few days.; Materials And Supplies Management System Manual

water absorption: Water absorption is the percent of water necessary to be added to the aggregate to obtain saturated surface dry (SSD) condition.; Manual of Testing Procedures

water content of a material: Water content of a material is equal to the ratio of the mass of “pore” or “free” water in a given mass of material to the mass of the solid particles in the same mass of material, expressed as a percentage.; Manual of Testing Procedures

waters of the United States: Waters of the United States is all waters which are currently used, were used, or may be used, for interstate or foreign commerce, including waters subject to tidal effect and wetlands.Waters of the United States means all interstate lakes, rivers, streams, mudflats, sandflats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes, natural ponds, tributaries which would or could affect interstate or foreign commerce.; Hydraulics Manual

watershed area: A watershed area is all land and water within the confines of a drainage divide or a water problem area consisting in whole or in part of land needing drainage or irrigation.; Hydraulics Manual

waves/sags/humps: Waves/sags/humps are surface defects which often results in poor ride quality, excessive impact loading of bridges and slabs, and may make vehicle control difficult. Typical causes are fill settlement, unstable cuts, expansive soils, and embankment shear failures.; Maintenance Collection

welded wire fabric: WWF; Welded wire fabric is a two-way reinforcement system for rigid slabs, fabricated from cold-drawn steel wire, having parallel longitudinal wires welded at regular intervals to parallel transverse wires. The wires may be either smooth or deformed. Deformed wire (used in deformed wire fabric, DWF) is that which has uniformly spaced deformations which inhibit longitudinal movement of the wire and which conform to “Specifications for Welded Deformed Steel Wire Fabric for Concrete Reinforcement,” AASHTO Designation M221.; Pavement Design Manual

Welfare-to-Work: W-t-W; Welfare-to-Work is a U.S. Department of Labor program providing assistance to long-term welfare recipients to overcome barriers to employment.; Public Transportation Collection

wet aggregate: Wet aggregate refers to aggregate in the stockpile condition.; Manual of Testing Procedures

wetland: Wetlands means land that has a predominance of hydric soils. Wetlands means land that is inundated or saturated by surface or groundwater at a frequency and duration to support a prevalence of hydrophytic vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil conditions. Wetlands means land that under normal circumstances does support a prevalence of hydrophytic vegetation. Examples include swamps, marshes, bogs, and similar areas.; Texas Civil Statutes, Article 5421u

whistleblower: A whistleblower is an employee who in good faith reports a suspected violation of law to the appropriate law enforcement agency.; Human Resources Manual

whistleblower grievance: A whistleblower grievance is a grievance alleging retaliation for reporting a suspected violation of law to an appropriate law enforcement authority.; Human Resources Manual

Wichita Falls District: WFS; The Wichita Falls District is a TxDOT district office including the following counties: Archer, Baylor, Clay, Cooke, Montague, Throckmorton, Wichita, Wilbarger, and Young. Area offices are located in Bowie, Gainesville, Graham, Vernon, and Wichita Falls. Maintenance offices are located in Bowie, Nocona, Gainesville, Graham, Olney, Throckmorton, Electra, Seymour, Vernon, Archer City, Henrietta, and Wichita Falls.; Inside TxDOT

Wide Area Information Server: WAIS; Wide Area Information Server is a text search and retrieval tool designed to extract information from text-based databases.; Information Technology and Services Manual

Wide Area Network: WAN; A wide area network (WAN) connects many local networks (LANs) or metropolitan area networks (MANs) together to provide limited resource sharing among the connected networks. A WAN consists of low-speed lines (that is, modems) to high-speed links. WANs are usually used to provide access to information (such as file sharing), rather than resource sharing of devices such as printers and disks.; Information Security Manual

WinCore: WinCore is a specialized computer program which enables the engineer to input field and laboratory data, request a foundation study of various types and sizes, and obtain an output of input and calculated data with a summary of comparative foundation designs.

wireless: Wireless communication is simply data communication without the use of landlines. This may involve cellular telephone, two-way radio, fixed wireless (broadband wireless), laser, or satellite communications.; Information Security Manual

wireless access point: A wireless access point is a base station that plugs into an Ethernet hub or server. Users can roam between access points.; Information Security Manual

work authorization: Contract Management Manual; Bridge Inspection Manual

work order: A work order is the document that details the authorization amount and permits the MPO to begin work under the approved UPWP.; Transportation Planning and Programming Collection

workplace: A workplace is any location where a TxDOT employee works, whether or not on state-owned property. An employee is in the workplace when operating or riding in a state vehicle.; Human Resources Manual

work program: A work program is a periodic statement of proposed work and estimated costs that document the eligible activities to be undertaken with FHWA planning and research funds during the next 1- or 2-year period by STAs and/or their subrecipients.; Transportation Planning and Programming Collection

workstation: Workstation is a generic term used to describe all microcomputers implemented to support TxDOT business functions.; Information Security Manual

work unit: A work unit is the smallest work group within a D/D/O/R, or Administration. Examples include, but are not limited to: A crew in a maintenance section, branch segments of a section, a specialized unit of business as defined on the D/D/O/R organizational chart.; Human Resources Manual

work week: A work week is the number of hours per week an employee normally works or a weekly average of the hours worked during the 12 weeks before the leave, excluding holidays. Forty hours worked within the 168 consecutive hours beginning at midnight on Friday and ending at midnight the following Friday. The State of Texas has defined its official work week as eight hours per day, Monday through Friday.; Human Resources Manual

workability: Workability is the ease with which paving mixtures may be placed and compacted. Workability of a mix depends upon a combination of factors, including temperature, asphalt content and aggregate gradation.; Departmental Material Specifications

workers’ compensation claims: Workers’ compensation claims are claims made by employees or their beneficiaries resulting from injuries or death to department employees in the course and scope of their employment.; Occupational Safety Manual

workday: A workday is any regularly scheduled hours of work, not including uninterrupted break time, that falls within a 24-hour period beginning at midnight and ending the following midnight.; Human Resources Manual

working day: A calendar day (not including Saturdays, Sundays, or legal holidays) in which weather or other conditions, not under the control of the contractor, will permit the performance of the principal unit of work underway for a continuous period of not less than 7 hours between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. (Refer to Item 1, TxDOT Standard Specifications). The contractor may choose to work on Saturday or legal holidays other than the six listed and be charged one day.; Construction Contract Administration Manual

World Wide Web: WWW; The World Wide Web is all the network-accessible resources and users on the Internet that are using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).; Information Security Manual

Worm: Worm is a program that makes copies of itself elsewhere in a computing system. These copies may be created on the same computer or may be sent over networks to other computers. The first use of the term described a program that copied itself benignly around a network, using otherwise-unused resources on networked machines to perform distributed computation. Some worms are security threats, using networks to spread themselves the wishes of the system owners and disrupting networks by overloading them. It is similar to a virus, in that it makes copies of itself, but different in that it need not attach to particular files or sectors at all.; Source: Information Security Manual