Home Costwitness
Before you sign, and after
Corven & Ashby protects the deal before signature. Costwitness protects the budget in the months that follow, against the same register.
A review ends. The exposures it named do not
Everything we find before signature is a prediction about the next eighteen months. The allowance that will not stretch, the long lead item already behind, the markup tier that compounds. Each one arrives later, one at a time, inside a payment application.
Costwitness is the owner-side product that watches for them. Each month it reads the applications and the change orders against the register the review produced, and reports what moved, what was predicted and what was not.
It is the same firm and the same position. Corven & Ashby is the advisory practice. Costwitness is what the practice does on a monthly cycle once the contract is live.
The same reading, on your payment cycle
Nothing here is a new method. It is the review, repeated against live documents instead of draft ones.
Applications read against the register
Every payment application checked against what the pre-signature review said would happen, so a predicted exposure is recognised the first time it appears rather than the third.
Change orders read against the clause
Each change order tested against the change clause, the unit rates and the markup tiers we reviewed before you signed.
A short owner report
On the same cycle as your payments. What moved, what it was worth, and whether it was on the register or is new.
Where the firm ends and the product begins
People ask which one they are buying. The honest answer is that it depends only on whether you have signed yet.
Before signature
Corven & Ashby. One deep read of the set, four modules, a register and a memo written to be taken into a negotiation. It happens once and it has a deadline.
After signature
Costwitness. The same register, checked every month against what is actually being invoiced. It happens continuously and it has no deadline except the end of the job.
If you only do one
Do the pre-signature read. After signature the terms are fixed, and monitoring a bad contract carefully is still monitoring a bad contract.
About the two names
The product has its own site. The position, the independence and the people are the same on both.
Do we have to buy both?
No. The pre-signature review is the one with a deadline, so it usually comes first. Costwitness makes most sense when that review has already produced a register worth watching.
Can we start Costwitness without a review first?
Yes, and we will build a register from the executed contract before the first monthly cycle. It is more work at the start, because the reading that would have happened before signature happens after it.
Is it software or people?
A person reads your documents every month and writes the report. The product is the arrangement and the discipline of doing it on a cycle, not an algorithm that grades your invoices.
Does it replace our cost consultant?
No. Your cost consultant or construction manager values the work. This reads the commercial terms behind the payment application, which is a different question and usually nobody’s job.
Why two brands at all?
Because they are bought at different moments by different people. Keeping them separate means neither has to pretend to be the other.
Protect the deal before you sign it, then protect the budget after
Applications and change orders read against the register, on the same cycle as your payments.
Four modules, one set of documents
Send the documents and we will say which module we would run first, and whether there is time for it before your signing date.