Applications read monthly
Each application read against the schedule of values and against progress, not approved on the strength of last month’s percentage plus a bit.
Why it happens
Why monthly owner cost assurance runs on your payment cycle
A payment cycle is the moment money leaves. That is when the reading has to happen.
Payment rides on a percentage
Progress is asserted by the party being paid and certified on a site walk. Nobody checks it against the schedule unless somebody is asked to.
Changes arrive without a cause
A change order priced in month four and classified in month fifteen is an argument. The cause decides who pays and is cheapest to set early.
Two reserves look like one
Owner contingency and contractor contingency reported as a single figure hide exactly the drawdown that is most worth questioning each month.
Why owners take this one
A register is only worth what somebody does with it afterwards
A pre-signature review ends at signature. The exposures it named do not. They arrive as change orders, as payment applications that draw on an allowance faster than the work justifies, as a contingency that is two thirds spent in month seven, and as notice deadlines that pass while the person who could have met them is reading something else.
The owner side of a construction project is usually one or two people with a portfolio. The contractor side is a team whose job for the next eighteen months is that one contract. The asymmetry is not a failure of diligence, it is arithmetic.
This package closes it by running the same reading every month on the same cycle as your payments, against the register we built before you signed. It is Costwitness, applied to your contract.
Turnaround
Monthly, on your payment cycle. 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
A cause on every change
Owner change, design gap, contractor risk or unforeseen condition. The cause decides who pays, and it is cheapest to assign when the change arrives.
Two contingencies apart
Yours and the contractor’s, tracked separately, because a single combined figure conceals exactly the drawdown you would want to question.
Notice deadlines in days
Each claim and each change order carries a clock. We count them and tell you which one runs out first, while there is still time to do something.
One report each month
A fixed format on a fixed date: what moved, what it cost, what is still open, and what needs your decision before the next payment cycle.
Stored materials checked
Materials billed before they reach site are checked for title and insurance, so you are not paying for something you do not yet own.
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.
Not a pre-signature review
It is what the pre-signature work is for. Without a register built before signature, there is nothing to read the monthly figures against.
We do not certify payment
We do not issue payment certificates or approve applications. We report what we see, and certification stays where your contract puts it.
We do not run the contract
No project meetings, no direction of the work and no instruction to the contractor. We read the documents, and you decide what to do.
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.
Set up once
The register from your review becomes the baseline. If we did not run the review, we read the contract set first so that there is something to measure against.
Every month, on your cycle
Applications, change orders, contingency drawdowns and notice clocks, read in the week your payment cycle runs so the report arrives before the decision, not after it.
For as long as it is worth it
Most owners run it through the months where the exposure is live and stop when it is not. There is no reason to pay for a reading of a project that has stopped moving.
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.
Is this the same as Costwitness?
Yes. Costwitness is the product, and this package is how the same work is bought as part of an advisory relationship with us rather than as software you run yourself. The reading, the registers and the monthly report are identical. If you would rather take the product on its own, it has its own site and its own terms.
Do we need to have used you before signature?
No, but it works considerably better if you have. Where there is no register we build a baseline from the executed contract set first, which takes longer and starts from a weaker position, because the price is now fixed and the questions we would have raised before signature can no longer change anything about it.
What does the contractor see?
Nothing, unless you decide to show them. The report is written for you and addressed to you. Most owners use it to decide which two or three items are worth raising in the month, and raise those in their own words through the channels the contract already provides, rather than forwarding our document across the table.
Can we stop?
Monthly, with notice, and without an argument. It is not a retainer designed to outlive its usefulness. If we think the exposure on your project has passed and the reading is no longer earning its fee, we will say so ourselves rather than waiting for you to work it out and raise it with us.
What you end up with
What arrives each month
One report, on a fixed date, before the payment decision.
Progress checked monthly
Percentage complete on the largest lines compared to the schedule update, and stored materials checked for title and insurance.
Changes with a clock
Every change classified by cause and every notice deadline counted in days, so you always know which clock runs out first.
Two reserves kept apart
Drawdowns from each contingency with a cause against each, read against the register built before you signed. Powered by Costwitness.
Eighteen months is where the register earns its fee.
Compare the four
Four
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.