- Qualifications and exclusions
- Allowances instead of prices
- Contingency size and control
We help owners protect the deal before they sign it, then protect the budget after they sign it.
Owner side construction cost advisory on your guaranteed maximum price, your schedule, your scope and your contingency, before the number is locked.
How a review runs
- 01You send the documentsThe draft amendment, the schedule of values and the qualifications list.
- 02We read them against each otherWhere the price, the scope and the schedule stop agreeing is where the money sits.
- 03You get a registerOne line per issue, what it is worth, and the question to put to the contractor.
Why it happens
Why owner side construction cost advisory exists at all
The price you are asked to sign was built by the party giving the guarantee. Nobody on your side has read it the way they wrote it.
The contractor drew the line
A guaranteed maximum price is a ceiling over a scope the contractor defined. The qualifications, exclusions and allowances that set its edge were written by the pricing team.
Your team reads other pages
Counsel reads the terms. The lender reads the budget. The design team reads the drawings. The commercial content of the price sits between all three, and it usually gets an evening.
The signing date is fixed
Leases, loan milestones and board dates fix the day the amendment is executed. Whatever has not been read by then becomes part of the deal, whatever it turns out to cost.
Our services
Four modules of a single review
Each module reads the same set of documents from a different side. Take one, or take all four as a single pre-signature review.
- Long-lead items and dates
- Owner decisions without float
- Where the float sits
- Scope gaps between packages
- Drawing and spec conflicts
- Items left to resolve later
- Priced lines versus assumed
- Provisional sums and ranges
- Who prices a change, and how
The price is agreed in the weeks when you know the least.
Up to
13%
Let us read it before you sign
of a guaranteed maximum price is carried as an allowance or a qualification rather than a price. Example figure, shown to illustrate the format.
About us
We read the GMP from the owner’s side.
We do not price work, we do not bid, and we do not act for contractors. There is nothing on the job we are protecting except your position.
The documents a review reads: the amendment, the schedule of values, the qualifications list and the current drawing set.
What lands on your desk
A GMP Risk Register, a Coverage Map, a Contingency Adequacy Assessment and an Owner Negotiation Memo. Findings ranked by the money behind them, each one pointing to the page it came from.
Independence
We are not a party to your contract and we do not bid work on it. The only reason an independent reading is worth anything is that the reader has nothing to gain from what it says.
- We act on the owner’s side only, never for the contractor
- We do not price work and we do not bid
- No fee is tied to what the review concludes
Documents, not opinions
Every finding points to a page: the allowance schedule, the qualifications list, the notice clause, the procurement log. If it is not in a document you hold, it does not go in the register.
- Each item carries its document and page reference
- Nothing is listed as a concern without a number beside it
- A document that does not exist yet is itself a finding
Ranked by exposure
Findings are ordered by the money behind them, not by how interesting they are. The first items on the register are the ones worth spending negotiating capital on before signature.
- Every item carries a trigger and a likely cost range
- The list is ordered by value, not by discipline
- You get the positions to take, in the order they matter
We work to your signing date
Where a signature date is already set, the ranked exposure is delivered first and the full register follows. The report is yours. We are not in the room when you negotiate it.
- Fixed scope, fixed fee, fixed delivery date
- One call to walk the owner-side team through it
- Nothing to renew and nothing to cancel
What happens after signature
The exposures a review names do not arrive on signing day. They arrive one at a time over the following eighteen months, which is when the register stops being a document and starts being a tool.
- Every change order read against the register we built
- Two contingency funds tracked apart, not as one figure
- Available monthly as Costwitness, or not at all
Our method
We read what the price is made of, and what it is worth in dollars
Our focus
The four things that decide whether a guaranteed maximum price protects the owner: what is priced, what is assumed, what the schedule depends on, and who controls the contingency.
Our approach
We read the set the contractor priced, from your side of the contract, and write down what it does not cover. No re-estimating, no re-pricing, no second opinion on the drawings.
Our deliverable
A written register addressed to the owner, with the exposure ranked, the trigger named and the contract language to close the largest openings. One call, no presentation deck.
Who we work for
Four owners of the same problem
We work on GMP and CM-at-risk projects, roughly $5 million to $150 million. We do not price work, we do not bid, and we do not act for contractors.
Developers
You carry the cost of every gap in the GMP. We test the number before you sign it and give you the positions to negotiate, in writing, ranked by what they are worth.
Owner’s representatives
You are accountable for a price you did not build up. We give you an independent register you can put in front of your client and your board, and defend line by line.
Family offices and investors
You are underwriting a construction risk that is not your core business. We translate the GMP into the exposure you are actually taking, in the language of capital.
Construction lenders
You are approving a drawdown against a price and a schedule. We tell you independently whether both are supportable, and what conditions to attach before capital is released.
What a review typically finds
Four numbers worth arguing about
Example figures, shown to illustrate what the register reports. They are not measured results and they are not a promise.
Carried as an allowance
Scope that sits in the price as a placeholder rather than a price. When it lands above the carried figure, the difference is owner money.
Packages not yet bought out
Work priced from an estimate rather than an award. Every unbought package is a number that can still move before it is fixed.
Long-lead items already late
Equipment whose order date has passed on the schedule the price was built against, before anybody has signed anything.
The notice window nobody counts
The time most contracts give the owner to answer a claim or a change notice. A missed window weakens your position, and it is recorded nowhere.
The documents a review reads
GMP Amendment
AIA A133 Exhibit A
AIA A102
Schedule of values
Assumptions and qualifications
Procurement log
Current drawing set
How a client buys
See the packages
Four ways to take the work
Rapid GMP Review
For an urgent decision before signature. Five to ten working days, focused on the largest exposures rather than the full four modules. Delivered as a risk register and a short negotiation memo.
Full Pre-GMP Owner Protection Review
All four modules. Price, schedule, scope and change exposure, with the full deliverable set from each module and one consolidated owner memo drawing them together. Recommended for a project going to GMP.
Lender and Investment Committee Memo
An independent memo written for a bank, a fund or an investment committee before capital is approved. Written to be read by people who are not builders, with the conditions that should attach to approval.
Monthly Owner Cost Assurance
This is Costwitness, after signature. Monthly independent review of what is being drawn against the GMP, what has changed, and whether the contingency is holding.
Before you sign, and after
The review ends at signature. The exposure does not.
Corven & Ashby reviews the GMP before signature. Costwitness is our product for the months that follow: monthly independent review of drawdowns, changes and contingency against the price you agreed. Same team, same standard, applied every month instead of once.
Corven & Ashby
A one-time review of the GMP, the schedule and the drawings before the signing date. Findings ranked by exposure, each citing its page, delivered as a register. Advisory, delivered once.
See the four modulesCostwitness
The owner’s own ledger on the contract, kept apart from the contractor’s books. Two contingency funds kept separate, a cause on every change, notice deadlines counted in days, and a monthly owner report.
Go to costwitness.com
What you end up with
What you walk into the negotiation with
Named consequences, written down before signature, in the order they are worth money.
A ranked list of what to raise
Every exposure sorted by the dollars behind it, so the last meeting before signature is spent on the three items that carry the value rather than the thirty that do not.
Positions you can price now
An allowance set below its scope, an uncapped escalation clause, a contingency with no rules. Each one becomes a number to negotiate before signature instead of a change order after it.
A baseline for the next two years
The same register is what every payment application and change order is read against after signature, so the months that follow are measured against what was known at the start.
Sectors
The work does not change by sector
The GMP, the schedule, the scope gaps and the contingency behave the same way on a hotel as on a data center. What changes is which risks matter most, and where they hide.
Commercial and mixed-use
Multifamily and residential
Data centers and mission critical
Hospitality
Healthcare and senior living
Industrial and self-storage