The GMP review timeline an owner can fit before signature is five to ten working days for the largest exposures and two to three weeks for a full reading. Both run in parallel with legal and lender work, so the calendar cost is usually a few days rather than a month.
Why the schedule argument is usually wrong
The objection to a review is almost never about the fee. It is that there is no time. The signing date is set, the contractor has crews planned, and adding a step feels like adding weeks.
That belief comes from a mental model where everything happens in sequence: contractor issues the price, lawyers read it, lender reads it, reviewer reads it, everybody signs. Four steps end to end is indeed a month.
The reading does not sit in that chain. It works from documents that are already issued, it does not require anything from the contractor, and nothing else in the process waits on it. Counsel is reading the contract body while the reviewer is reading the exhibits. The lender is running its own process on the same package.
The genuine cost is not the reading. It is the conversation afterwards, when three positions go back to the contractor and somebody has to respond. That is two or three days, and it is the part worth protecting.
So the honest number is not four weeks. It is the overlap that cannot be compressed, which on most jobs is under a week.
The GMP review timeline an owner should plan for
Day zero. The documents go across. Not a data room invitation, the actual files: the draft amendment, the schedule of values, the qualifications and assumptions, the allowance schedule, the drawing set the price was built from, the specification, the procurement log and the schedule.
Days one and two. Completeness check and first pass. This is where the missing documents surface, and the missing ones are findings in their own right. A procurement log that does not exist tells you something about how settled the buyout is.
Days three to six. The reading. Qualifications line by line, allowances against the current drawings, schedule logic against the milestone dates, change order terms and markups.
Day seven. Draft register, ranked by dollar value, with page references.
Days eight and nine. Your review of it, then the short call. Which findings you will take forward, in what order, and what closing each one looks like.
Day ten onward. Your conversation with the contractor. That one is not on our clock and it is the one to leave room for.
A full review extends the middle band rather than the ends. The shape does not change.
What runs at the same time
Three processes overlap cleanly with the reading, and one does not.
Legal review overlaps. Counsel is reading the contract body, the indemnities, the insurance provisions and the dispute clause. The commercial reading is in the exhibits, which counsel typically does not price. The two produce different findings from the same package and they rarely collide.
Lender due diligence overlaps. The bank wants the same facts the reading produces, which is why the output is usually addressed in a form a credit committee can take directly. The reading often shortens the lender question cycle rather than adding to it.
Insurance and bonding overlap, because neither depends on the commercial position.
Design completion does not overlap. If the drawings are moving during the reading, the reading is against a moving target and the findings age quickly. That is a reason to time the review to a drawing issue, not a reason to skip it. The related question of pricing a design that is not finished is its own subject.
Where the schedule genuinely will not allow the full band, the answer is a narrower scope rather than a faster one. Four documents read properly beats eight read quickly, and the four are set out in the questions to ask before you sign.
What makes it slower
Four things stretch the band, and three of them are inside your control.
Documents arriving in pieces. A reading that starts with half the set restarts when the other half lands. Sending everything on day zero, including the documents you think are irrelevant, is the single largest saving available.
A drawing set that is not the priced set. If the price was built on a set from March and you send the set from June, every allowance comparison is against the wrong basis. The reading needs both, and it needs to be told which is which.
An approval chain with no name on it. If the register goes to a committee that meets fortnightly, the two day step becomes a two week step. Decide before day zero who reads the draft and who decides what goes back to the contractor.
A contractor that is slow to answer. This one is not yours, and it is the reason to start earlier rather than to compress the reading. A question sent on day seven and answered on day twenty is a schedule problem created on day seven.
A worked example
Illustrative figures. Not taken from any client project and not a quotation.
A $52 million guaranteed maximum price on an industrial project. Signing target is nineteen days away, set by a lease commencement date that does not move.
Documents go across on a Monday. Counsel starts the contract body the same day. The lender has the package and is running appraisal in parallel.
The reading covers qualifications, allowances, procurement position and change order terms. The register lands on the following Tuesday, six working days later, with nine findings and a combined open exposure of $1.9 million.
The owner takes three findings forward on the Wednesday. The contractor responds the following Monday. Two close, one is accepted and budgeted at $410,000. The amendment is executed on day sixteen, three days inside the target.
The reading did not cost the project any calendar days. It consumed slack that existed in the legal and lender chain and would otherwise have gone unused.
What to do to protect the time
- Fix the signing date in writing and work backward from it rather than forward from today.
- Send every document on day zero, including the ones you think are not relevant.
- Say which drawing set the price was built on and send that set as well as the current one.
- Name one person who receives the draft register and one person who decides what goes back.
- Book the conversation with the contractor before the reading starts, not after it finishes.
- Leave three working days between the register and the signing date for the response.
- If the band will not fit, narrow the scope rather than compressing the reading.
Item five is the one people skip. A meeting booked in advance concentrates everybody, including the party being asked to move, and it converts a review into a negotiation with a date on it. The scoping options sit in the review packages.
What we do
We work backward from your signing date and say at the start whether the scope fits. If it does not, we narrow the scope and tell you what we are leaving out rather than reading everything badly. The output is a ranked register with a dollar figure and a page reference on each line, delivered with enough days left for the conversation it is meant to support. The scope and turnaround sit in the readiness review.
Questions people ask
Can a review be done in under a week?
Yes, if the scope is narrowed to the four documents that carry the largest movement: qualifications, allowances, procurement position and change order terms. What you give up is coverage of the schedule logic and the scope interfaces, and the register should say so plainly rather than implying the ground was covered.
Do you need anything from the contractor?
No. The reading runs on documents you already hold, which is what keeps it off the critical path and out of the relationship. Where something is missing from the set, the absence becomes a finding and you decide whether to ask for it, rather than us opening a channel with the other side.
When is it too late to be useful?
Once the amendment is executed the instrument changes but the value does not disappear. Findings become budget lines and management actions instead of negotiating positions. The only genuinely poor moment is after a dispute has started, when an independent register reads as an argument rather than a record.
This is general information about construction contracts and is not legal advice.