Home Who we work for

Owners on a guaranteed maximum price or CM-at-risk contract

Four kinds of client, one position. Owners, the people who represent them and the people who finance them sit on one side of the contract. We sit on that side and nowhere else.

How we are set up:

We act on the owner’s side only
No fee is tied to what the review concludes

The line that defines us

We act on the owner’s side, and never on the other one

What these five have in common is that they stand behind the owner’s money. They carry, fund or answer for the cost of every gap in a price that somebody else built up.

What differs is who they answer to, and therefore what the memo has to survive: a partner, a board, an auditor, a bond covenant, a credit committee.

We do not price work, we do not bid, and we do not act for contractors. Not on your project and not on anybody else’s, because a reviewer who works both sides is not independent on either.

Four kinds of client

One position, four different rooms to defend it in

The register is written the same way every time. What changes is who the memo has to survive being read by.

Developers

You carry the cost of every gap in the price.

Your contractor built the number up and you are being asked to accept it as a ceiling. Every allowance that cannot stretch, every exclusion nobody added up and every qualification that quietly moves scope back to you lands on your balance sheet, not theirs.

What you usually ask us

Is this number defensible to my equity partner?
Which three items would you reopen, and in what order?
What does the contingency actually cover, and who keeps what is left?

The full page for developers

Owner’s representatives

Accountable for a price you did not build up.

You are answerable for a number that somebody else assembled, often on a program somebody else wrote. A review gives you an independent read you can put your name to, and a memo that shows the work rather than an opinion that asks to be trusted.

What you usually ask us

Can I hand this to my client without caveats?
What did I miss that a specialist would catch?
Where does my exposure sit if this price moves?

The full page for owner representatives

Family offices and investors

A construction risk that is not your core business.

You are good at the asset and the return. Construction contracts are a specialist risk you meet a few times a decade, and the terms that will govern eighteen months of spending are decided in one week of drafting you were not part of.

What you usually ask us

What are we actually signing up to?
How much of this price can move after we sign?
Is this worth an independent read at all?

The full page for family offices and investors

Construction lenders

Approving a drawdown against a price and a date.

You are lending against a number and a completion date, and your recourse if either turns out to be soft is slow and expensive. A memo written for a credit reader tells you where the price is open before the first draw goes out.

What you usually ask us

Is the ceiling real, or is it a target?
What is the realistic exposure above the contract sum?
Is the completion date consistent with the procurement behind it?

The full page for construction lenders

Before you commission anything

Questions owners ask

If your situation is not one of these five, send it anyway. The question we answer is always the same one: what does this contract actually cover.

Do you ever act for contractors?

No. Not on your project, and not on a different one. A firm that reviews prices for owners on Monday and builds them for contractors on Tuesday is not independent on either day.

We already have an owner’s representative. Does this overlap?

It sits alongside. Your representative manages the project. We read one set of documents once, in depth, for a question they usually do not have two weeks to spend on.

Can a lender commission this directly?

Yes. The memo is then written for a credit reader, and we will tell the borrower that we have been engaged. We do not work for two parties on one project without both knowing.

Do you sign confidentiality agreements?

Yes, as a matter of course. The documents stay with the engagement and the deliverables are not reused.

What if our project is outside the United States?

Ask. The method travels, the contract forms do not always. We will say plainly if we are not the right firm for a jurisdiction rather than learn it on your fee.

A reviewer who works both sides is not independent on either

Where a review pays for itself $10M

to $150M guaranteed maximum price. A fit statement, not a rule. We will tell you when a review is not worth the fee.

The four modules

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.

All four modules