Screed
To strike off fresh concrete level with the top of the forms, and also the straightedge or powered tool used to do it. It is the first finishing operation.
What does screed mean?
Screeding establishes the slab's elevation and flatness, and no later operation fully recovers what is lost here. Tools range from a hand-pulled straightedge on small pours to vibratory and laser-guided screeds on large placements. Screeding too wet or dragging excess paste around at this stage sets up surface problems that appear days later.
In practice
On a residential driveway two workers sawing a two-by-four across the forms are screeding, and their accuracy determines whether water ponds later.