Scenarios
Situations that bring clients in
Fifteen commercial positions we are asked to deal with, described by the problem rather than by the client. No project is named and no figure is quoted, because the commercial detail of a scheme is not ours to publish.
Before you commit
Where the exposure is created
The decisions taken before contract award set every commercial position that follows. These are the five places that go wrong most often.
Scope definition risk
Everyone in the room agreed what was being built. Three contractors priced it and returned three different buildings.
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Quantity assumption risk
You have a cost plan. Your contractor has a price. Neither of you has established which set of quantities the contract actually runs on.
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Tender documentation gaps
Every unanswered question in a tender document is answered by the contractor, in writing, at your expense.
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Procurement strategy failure
The route was chosen for the programme. Everything that went wrong afterwards was a predictable consequence of that single decision.
Read the scenarioIncomplete design information
Packages went to tender while the design was still moving. The returns priced the gaps as risk, and the client paid for that risk twice.
Read the scenarioWhat the budget is not showing
What a total does not tell you
A cost plan can be accurate and still be misleading. Accuracy describes the number. These four describe what the number is carrying.
Hidden cost exposure
The budget held through design. Then it moved twice in six weeks once the packages came back. Nothing had gone wrong. It had simply become visible.
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Site logistics constraints
The building was straightforward. Getting materials to it, storing them and working within the permitted hours was not, and none of that appeared...
Read the scenarioContractor pricing volatility
The same scheme, tendered twice within a year, returned prices far apart. Material inflation explained a small part of the movement. Risk...
Read the scenarioPhasing coordination failure
Each phase was planned properly. What nobody had planned was the condition in which one phase would hand the site to the next.
Read the scenarioWhile the works are running
Where exposure enters quietly
Exposure created during construction is exposure created quietly. By the time it is visible in a cost report, the leverage to do anything about it has usually gone.
Late design changes
A change instructed in week three of a build costs a fraction of the same change instructed in week thirty. The difference is not the work. It is...
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Design coordination breakdown
Every discipline had completed its work correctly. The problem was in the space between them, which belonged to nobody.
Read the scenarioProgramme sequencing risk
The same scope, built in a different order, is a different price. Very few cost plans are ever tested against the sequence the contractor intends...
Read the scenarioAcceleration pressure
A completion date was at risk and a funder was watching. The acceleration proposal arrived on a Friday and required a decision by Monday.
Read the scenarioWhen the position has hardened
Forensic rather than advisory
Where a claim has already been assembled or two parties have stopped agreeing, the work is forensic rather than advisory.
Variation claim exposure
By the time a variations package lands on your desk, it has been prepared by people whose job is to maximise recovery. Yours has not been prepared...
Read the scenarioContract interpretation disputes
Both parties read the same clause. Both were confident. Neither was going to be persuaded by the other reading it to them again.
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