Package boundaries
Where each trade package is written to stop, read against where the next one is written to begin. The two rarely meet exactly, and the distance between them is the finding.
Home Services Constructability and Interface Review
A constructability review an owner runs to find the scope nobody priced
We find what will go wrong on site while it is still cheap to fix. Most of it sits where one trade package ends and the next begins.
The question it answers
What is going to blow up on site?
Why it happens
Why a constructability review is an owner decision
The gaps between packages belong to nobody, which means they end up belonging to the owner.
Packages split by activity
Each trade prices what its scope describes. The edges, the joints and the connections between systems are frequently described by no scope at all.
Documents disagree
Drawings, specification and price were produced at different times by different people. Where they conflict, the argument about who pays comes later.
Models find clashes, not gaps
A model shows where two things occupy the same space. It does not show which work nobody priced, and that is the commercial question for the owner.
What it covers
We look for the scope that sits in nobody’s package
Where one trade’s package stops, the next one’s is assumed to start. The distance between them is often priced by neither side. That is not a drawing error, and no model will flag it.
Those gaps are commercial rather than geometric. They arrive as change orders in month four, when somebody finally has to build the joint and discovers that two scopes of work both point at each other.
We find them while the price is still open, when a gap is a negotiation instead of a change order.
What you send us
Every trade package scope of work
The scope matrix, if one exists
The drawing set
The specification
The schedule of values
The qualifications list for each major trade
Send what you have. A document that does not exist yet is itself a finding, and we will say so rather than wait for it.
What we read
Six things we open first
The order matters. These six carry most of the exposure on most projects, so they come before anything else in the set.
Orphan scope
Work that appears on the drawings but sits inside nobody’s scope of work. It is on the job, it will be built, and at the moment nobody has priced it.
Double exclusions
Interfaces excluded by the trade on one side and excluded again by the trade on the other. Both exclusions are legitimate. Together they are an owner cost.
Access and sequence
What each package assumes about access, protection and the condition it inherits from the trade before it. An assumption about a clean, dry, level surface is a price.
Attachment and support
Who supplies the steel, who supplies the fixing, and who is assumed to have set it out. Three questions, and on most jobs at least one of them has no answer.
Testing and commissioning
Who proves the assembly works where two trades meet, and who pays when it does not work the first time. Fire stopping and building envelope tests are where this bites hardest.
How we read it
The method, and its limits
What a review is worth depends as much on what it refuses to do as on what it covers.
What we do
Read every package scope against the two packages on either side of it, then against the drawings that show the joint between them, line by line.
What we do not do
We do not run clash detection, review the design or say whether a detail is buildable. Those questions belong to your engineer and your architect.
What decides the order
Frequency multiplied by cost. A small gap repeated across two hundred openings outranks a large gap that happens only once, in the lobby.
One line from a register
What a finding looks like
A curtain wall package that excludes the internal perimeter closure. A drywall package that excludes work inside the curtain wall zone. The closure appears on the drawings on every floor of the building, and neither scope of work includes it.
What the finding is worth
$40k to $70k per floor
Example only. Figures on this site illustrate the format of a deliverable. They are not taken from a client project and they are not a quotation.
What lands on your desk
01
02
03
Documents, not opinions
Every finding carries the money behind it and points to the page of the set it came from. One call to walk it through, before your signing date.
Interface Gap Register
Each gap, the two packages it sits between, the drawing that shows it, and what closing it is likely to cost.
Package Boundary Map
Where the scope lines fall across the job, drawn so that the gaps are visible at a glance rather than buried in six scope documents.
Owner Memo
The gaps worth closing in the contract rather than in the field, with the scope language that closes them.
Before you commission it
Questions owners ask
Run it once the trade packages are bought or close to bought, and before the guaranteed maximum price is fixed. Earlier than that the scopes are still moving. Later than that the gaps have already been priced against you.
Is this a BIM or clash review?
No. A clash review is geometric and your design team should already be running one. This one reads scope documents, and the two find completely different problems.
Do you mark up drawings?
We reference them. Each gap points to the drawing and to the two package scopes that leave it open, so anybody can check the finding without taking our word for it.
How long does a constructability review take?
Ten to fifteen working days on a typical building, because the work scales with the number of packages rather than the value of the job.
Can this run after award?
It can, and it is still worth doing. It is worth more before, because before award a gap is a negotiation and after award it is a change order with a markup on top.
What if you find nothing?
On a well written package set the gaps are fewer and smaller, and the memo says so. We are paid the same either way.
What you end up with
What you resolve before signature
A list of items to close now, and a list of items to write into the contract if they cannot be closed.
A scope gap register
Package by package, with the party who should carry each item, written while the trades are still competing for the work.
A document conflict log
Each conflict with its drawing and specification reference, so the question of which governs is settled before it is priced as a change.
Sequencing risks, ranked
Access, temporary works and difficult sequences, ordered by their cost and delay effect rather than by where they appear in the set.
| Fee | Fixed, quoted against a named document set listed in the engagement. Not hourly. |
|---|---|
| Payment | Fifty percent on engagement, fifty percent before the final deliverable is released. |
| The clock | Delivery starts when the complete document set arrives, not when the engagement is signed. |
| Included | One kickoff call and one readout call. |
| Turnaround | Three weeks, scoped on the number of trade packages. |
A gap between two packages is priced by nobody and paid for by you
How this one is bought
One
See the packages
Take this module on its own, or take all four as a single review with one consolidated owner memo.
The other modules
Same set of documents, read from a different side
If you are not sure which module answers your question, send the documents and we will say which one we would run first.