Allowances
Every allowance line, with what it is expected to buy and what happens to the price when it does not stretch that far. An allowance that cannot adjust is an owner cost waiting to be named.
Home Services Pre-GMP Readiness Review
A pre GMP review that tests whether the number is a real ceiling
Before you sign the GMP, we test whether the number actually protects you. The first page looks like a ceiling. The exhibits decide whether it is one.
The question it answers
Am I signing a real ceiling, or a number that looks good on the first page?
Why it happens
What a pre GMP review looks for, and why it is there
A guaranteed maximum price guarantees the cost of a defined scope. Four mechanisms move cost without moving the ceiling.
Scope defined by the price
Qualifications and exclusions narrow what the number covers. The party giving the guarantee writes them, which is ordinary, and nobody on the owner side reads them.
Placeholders inside the number
Allowances carry scope that is not priced yet. When that work is bought, the difference between the allowance and the actual price is owner money, every time.
A reserve with no rules
Contingency that the contractor can draw without notice, and a balance that falls into the savings pool rather than coming back, change what the percentage is worth.
What it covers
A ceiling is only a ceiling where the scope behind it is closed
Allowances, qualifications and exclusions are the places where the scope is not closed. Each one is a door the price can walk through after you sign, and most guaranteed maximum prices carry dozens of them.
We list every one, read it against the drawing set and the specification it was priced from, and say what it is worth if it opens. Then we rank the list, so you know which three to reopen before signature and which twenty to accept and move on.
The review runs on documents you already hold. We do not ask the contractor for anything, and we do not need access to the site. Where something is missing from the set, the gap itself becomes a finding and we say what it is likely to cost.
What you send us
The draft GMP amendment
The schedule of values
The qualifications and assumptions list
The drawing set the price was built on
The specification
The allowance schedule
The contingency plan, if one is written
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.
Qualifications
The contractor’s qualifications read one at a time against the drawings they were priced from, not the cover letter. Most are reasonable. The two that are not tend to outweigh the rest.
Exclusions
What has been written out of the price, and who is assumed to be paying for it instead of the contractor. Exclusions are honest. The problem is that nobody on the owner side adds them up.
Contingency
How much there is, who releases it, what it is allowed to cover, and what happens to the balance at closeout. A contingency the contractor controls and keeps is a discount they have already taken.
Alternates and unit prices
Alternates that may or may not be accepted, and the unit prices that will govern them when they are. A unit price agreed before award is a negotiation. The same one after award is an invoice.
Basis of the price
Which drawing revision and which specification date the number was actually built on, and what has changed since. A price against a set that is four revisions old is a price for a different building.
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 the set against itself. Every qualification against the drawing it qualifies, every allowance against the scope it is meant to buy, every exclusion against the trade that would otherwise carry it.
What we do not do
We do not re-estimate, we do not re-price, and we do not produce a competing number. A second opinion on the cost of concrete helps nobody, and it is not what is wrong with most guaranteed maximum prices.
What decides the order
Money. The register comes back ranked by exposure, not by the order items happened to appear in the documents. Three findings usually carry most of the value, and they come first.
One line from a register
What a finding looks like
An allowance for exterior signage carried at one hundred and eighty thousand dollars. The specification section it points to describes an illuminated system on three elevations. The current drawings show signage on four. The allowance is not written to adjust, so the fourth elevation is an owner cost the moment the design holds.
What the finding is worth
$60k to $90k
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
04
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.
GMP Risk Register
Every opening in the price, with the exposure behind it and the page of the set it came from. Sorted by money, not by document order.
Coverage Map
What the price covers, what it assumes, and the places where those two do not meet. One page, readable by somebody who has never held a drawing.
Contingency Adequacy Assessment
Whether the contingency is sized for the openings we found, with the arithmetic shown so you can argue with it.
Owner Negotiation Memo
The three to five items worth reopening before you sign, in the order we would take them, with the language we would use.
Before you commission it
Questions owners ask
Run it after the contractor hands over the guaranteed maximum price and before the amendment is executed. Two weeks of notice is comfortable, one week is workable, and the day before signature is too late to change anything.
How long does a pre-GMP readiness review take?
Five to ten working days for the largest exposures, two to three weeks for the full module. We work back from your signing date. If there is not enough time left to be useful, we say so instead of taking the fee.
Do you talk to the contractor?
Only if you ask, and only with you in the room. We are not a party to your contract and we do not negotiate on your behalf. The memo is written so that you or your counsel can take it into the room without us.
What if the price turns out to be sound?
Then the memo says so, in writing, and you sign with that on file. No fee is tied to what the review concludes, which is the only arrangement under which that sentence means anything.
Do you need the full drawing set?
It helps. Without it we can still read the commercial documents, but findings that depend on the drawings come back marked as less certain, and we tell you which ones and why.
Is this an estimate?
No. An estimate answers what the work should cost. This answers what the contract you are about to sign actually covers, which is a different question and usually the more expensive one to get wrong.
What you end up with
What you sign with
Four documents, each citing the page it came from.
A GMP Risk Register
Ranked, with a trigger and a likely cost range against each item. The first three lines are where your negotiating time should go before you sign.
Coverage and contingency
A Coverage Map of what the price covers and does not, and a Contingency Adequacy Assessment of whether the reserve is sized against named events.
An Owner Negotiation Memo
The positions to take before signature, in the order they matter, written so that you or your counsel can use them without us in the room.
| 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 from the complete document set. |
Every finding points to the page it came from
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.