Commercial and mixed-use
Tenant fit out boundaries and the condition the base build is handed over in. Two scopes meet at a line nobody drew.
Home Sectors
A GMP review by sector, and what changes between building types
A hotel and a data center are priced under the same kind of contract and fail in different places. The reading is the same. The emphasis is not.
Why it happens
What a GMP review by sector changes, and what it does not
The documents are the same on every building. Where the money hides depends on who else is making decisions.
Operators and tenants add dates
Brand standards, operator requirements and lease dates arrive after the price and sit on the critical path.
Equipment drives the schedule
Data center and healthcare projects depend on long lead equipment and owner furnished items that sit outside most trade scopes.
Repeat designs hide site risk
Industrial, multifamily and self storage prototypes are predictable. The site, the approvals and the interfaces are not.
Sectors
A guaranteed maximum price behaves the same way in every building type
Allowances stretch or they do not. Exclusions add up or they do not. Float belongs to somebody or to nobody. None of that changes because the building is a school rather than a warehouse.
What changes is which of those mechanisms carries the money on a given project, and that is predictable once you know the building type and how it will be procured.
We do not present sector experience as a credential, because on its own it is not one. We present a method, and a note on where that method usually finds the money in each kind of building.
Six sectors
Same method, different hiding places
We do not claim sector expertise as a credential. We claim that the commercial documents behave the same way, and that where the risk sits is predictable once you know the building type.
Multifamily and residential
Repetition. A small gap in one unit type multiplied by three hundred units stops being small very quickly.
Data centers and mission critical
Long lead electrical equipment, and commissioning responsibility where the witness testing sits between three parties.
Hospitality
Operator standards that arrive after the price is set, and the boundary between construction and the furniture package.
Healthcare and senior living
Phasing around a facility that stays open, infection control requirements, and equipment supplied by others.
Industrial and self-storage
Site work and utilities, where most of the unknowns sit below grade and most of the allowances point at them.
Project size
Roughly $5 million to $150 million
That range is where an independent review reliably pays for itself. Below $5 million, the fee stops being a small fraction of the budget. Above $150 million, projects tend to carry their own commercial teams, and our work becomes a second opinion rather than the reading.
It is a fit statement rather than a rule. Projects outside the range do come up, and we take some of them. When a review would not be worth the fee on a particular project, we say so before we quote rather than after the work has started.
Before you commission anything
Questions owners ask
If your building type is not on the list, it does not mean we cannot read the documents. It means we will tell you what we do and do not know about that market before you commission anything.
Do you specialize in one sector?
No, and we would be careful of anybody who claims the specialism matters more than the method. What we read is a contract, a schedule of values and a set of package scopes.
Our building type is not listed. Can you still help?
Usually. The documents are the same. We will say what we know and do not know about that market before quoting, so you can weigh it.
Does sector change the price of a review?
Only through the size of the set and the number of trade packages. A complex hospital takes longer than a warehouse of the same value because there is more to read.
Do you have references in our sector?
We do not publish client names or case studies. Engagements are confidential and we would rather be trusted for how we work than for whose name we can drop.
Do you work on renovation as well as new build?
Yes, and renovation tends to carry more exposure per dollar, because more of the price rests on assumptions about what is behind the wall.
What you end up with
What changes in the register
The same four modules, with the attention where your building type needs it.
A different first page
On a hotel it is the operator requirements. On a warehouse it is the site. The register leads with what your sector usually gets wrong.
Sector specific questions
The points to raise before signature that a general reading would treat as detail, written for the building type you are signing.
Reading that follows the building
Each sector links to the notes we have written on its recurring exposures, so the reasoning is available before the review starts.
The method does not change. Where the money hides does.
Where a review pays for itself
$5M
Why the range sits there
to $150M guaranteed maximum price. A fit statement, not a rule. We will tell you when a review is not worth the fee.
The work itself
Four modules, one set of documents
Whatever you take and whoever you are, the reading is the same. Send the documents and we will say which module we would run first.