The position in two pages
What the price covers, what it does not, and what the difference is worth. Written to be read in full by somebody with eleven other papers in the pack.
Why owners take this one
The audience decides the document, not the findings
A construction risk register is written for somebody who knows what a schedule of values is. A credit committee does not, and should not have to. Hand them the register and one of two things happens: the committee approves something it did not understand, or it stalls on a question that was answered on page four in language nobody read.
This is not a separate review. It is the same findings, ordered the way a financial reader asks for them: what is the exposure, what is it worth, what is the probability, what conditions would reduce it, and what happens if nothing is done.
It needs at least one module underneath it. We do not write a memo about documents we have not read, and a lender who discovers that the memo rests on nothing is a worse outcome than no memo at all.
Turnaround
Five working days after the underlying review. Fees are quoted per project once we have seen the documents, never as a percentage of what the review finds.
What is in it
What you get, item by item
Exposure quantified, not adjectival
Every item carries a dollar range and a basis. Significant, material and substantial are not quantities and do not appear.
Conditions worth attaching
The covenants, holdbacks and drawdown conditions that would actually reduce the exposure, named while they still cost the borrower a negotiation rather than a waiver.
The construction language removed
No schedule of values, no float, no buyout gap. The mechanisms stay, the vocabulary goes, and nothing is softened in the translation.
The underlying register attached
The full technical findings sit behind the memo as an appendix, so that the one person in the room who does want the detail can have it.
Where it stops
What this package does not do
What a package is worth depends as much on what it refuses to do as on what it covers, so the limits are on the page rather than in the engagement letter alone.
It is not a recommendation to lend
We do not advise on credit. The memo gives the committee the facts in the order it asks for them and stops there. The decision is the committee’s.
It is not a standalone product
At least one module has to run underneath it. The memo has no findings of its own.
It is not an unlimited reliance letter
If a lender, a fund or an investment committee needs to rely on the work, that is arranged separately and in writing, addressed to them by name.
How it runs
From the documents to the decision
We work back from your date rather than quoting a duration and letting you discover the collision later.
After the underlying review
The memo is written from findings that already exist, so it does not add weeks to your timetable. Five working days after the review it rests on.
Drafted to the audience
Tell us who reads it: a construction lender, an investment committee, a family office board, a joint venture partner. The structure changes, the findings do not.
One call with the room if you want it
We will take the questions the committee raises, with you present. We answer on the findings and we do not advise on the credit decision.
Before you commission it
Questions owners ask
If the answer to any of these decides whether the package is right for you, ask us before you commission it rather than after.
Can our lender rely on this memo?
Not automatically. A memo addressed to you is written for you. Reliance by a lender, a fund or an investment committee is arranged separately through a reliance letter naming them, because reliance changes who we owe a duty to and that has to be written down rather than assumed.
How long is it?
Two pages of position, plus the ranked exposure table, plus the underlying technical register attached as an appendix. The two pages are the product and they are written to be read in full. The appendix exists so that the detail is on the record and available to the one person who wants it, not because we expect the room to read it.
We already have a monitoring surveyor. Is this the same thing?
No, and the two are complementary rather than competing. A monitoring surveyor reports on progress against drawdowns once construction is under way. This reads the price and the contract before signature and states what the exposure is while it can still be negotiated. Different question, different moment, and most lenders eventually want both.
Can you present it to the committee?
Yes, with you present, either on a call or in the meeting itself. We answer questions on the findings and on how we reached them. We do not advise on whether to lend, invest or approve, and we say that in the room as plainly as we say it here, because a committee that mistakes us for a credit adviser is a problem for everybody.
Two pages a committee can act on, with the detail behind it.
Compare the four
Three
See all four side by side
The four packages draw on the same modules and the same method. What changes is scope, speed and who the memo is written for.
Written from the same desk
Three notes behind this package
Short pieces on the mechanisms this package is built to catch, written from the owner side of the contract.
The other three
Bought in four different shapes
Every package runs the same method and the same registers. What changes is how much of it runs, how fast, and who the document has to survive being read by. The packages overview sets the four against each other, and the four modules describe the work itself.