Okay, so here's hoping someone awesome can help me out with this seemingly very specific term. I'm translating a ton of stuff related to concrete right now for a job, and I've run into the phrase "前置き" several times. And it's important to what I'm doing right now. Contextually it seems to be a time where the cement is left to breath (which, BTW, is subcaptioned as 浮水, which I can't find a great definition for either, but since I know it's letting the cement breath I'm not sure it matters). It's blatantly a part of the process. The kanji are obvious enough, and I've got the idea of what it is, but I can't peg the technical term, and all that's coming up is literary definitions. My best attempt right now is "setting phase" or something to that effect, but I'm not much of a concrete expert so I'd really love to be able to be more precise/accurate.
So yeah, if anyone has knowledge that could help me out, that'd be awesome. I may also have a few other things later. Darn technical terms are hard to wrangle, though.