Borrower side
You are the party carrying the cost risk. The advice you need is not the most encouraging version of the numbers. It is the version that holds when a lender, a board or a joint venture partner starts asking where each figure came from.
The problem
That is not an accusation. It is a structural feature of how development teams are assembled, and it shapes the advice you receive.
The design team earns fees as the design develops, and their cost input protects the design. The contractor prices the risk it is being asked to carry and manages that risk commercially throughout. The agent is optimistic about values because optimism is what wins the instruction. Every one of those parties can be entirely competent and honest, and the combined picture still tilts one way.
An independent commercial adviser exists to put weight on the other side. We have no design fee, no delivery position and no software licence in the scheme. If the number is wrong we have no reason not to say so, which is the entire value of the appointment.
Who instructs us
Running multiple schemes at different stages, needing a commercial position per project that is current, comparable and ready to put in front of a funder without a week of preparation.
Deploying capital into development without an in-house construction function, and needing the construction side of a transaction tested by someone whose only role is to test it.
Where there is already a commercial function in the business, our role is usually narrower and more specific: an independent take-off to check a contractor's quantities, a review of a cost plan before a board paper, quantum support on a contested account, or additional capacity on a scheme that has outgrown the team available.
We are comfortable working underneath an existing commercial lead rather than around them. The instruction is scoped so it is clear what we are doing, what we are not, and who the output belongs to.
What you get
Every output is built on the assumption that it will be read by someone who was not in the room and who is looking for the weakness in it.
Every figure carries its source, its measurement basis and its assumptions. Nothing rests on a rate that cannot be explained.
Design risk, construction risk, inflation and abnormals are individual lines, not one contingency percentage covering everything.
Each reissue reconciles to the last one, so the change between versions is a schedule rather than a discussion.
The side we act on is printed on every document, which is what makes it usable by the party on the other side of the table.
A view, stated. Where the position is weak we say so in the report rather than in a phone call afterwards.
Services
Feasibility appraisals, elemental cost plans and pre-tender estimates built on measured quantities.
Read the pageIndependent measurement to NRM2, from drawings or from the model, with a full audit trail.
Read the pageRoute and contract selection, tender documentation and bid analysis on a normalised basis.
Read the pageValuations, change control and monthly reporting with a forecast out-turn you can rely on.
Read the pageAccount preparation, review and negotiation, and quantum support where it turns contentious.
Read the pageResidential, mixed use, refurbishment, complex phasing, prime residential and contentious schemes.
Read the pageQuestions
Usually for a specific reason rather than a general one: an independent check on a cost plan before a funding decision, a second measure on a large package, capacity on a scheme the incumbent cannot resource, or a contentious account that needs someone with no history in the relationship. If your existing appointment is working, we will say so and leave it alone.
If we are appointed by you, we report to you. Our duty and our reporting line follow the appointment. What we will not do is produce a document with a conclusion we do not hold, because that document has our name on it and it will be read by people whose job is to test it. The best protection with a lender is a cost position that survives examination, not one that avoids it.
On a different scheme, yes, and we will disclose it. By contrast, on the same scheme, no, in either order. One side per project is an absolute rule, and it is what makes our work acceptable to the other side of the table when it matters.
Fixed fee against a written scope wherever the scope can be defined, which covers most cost planning, take-off, tender and control work. Time charge for contentious and open-ended instructions, with a budget and a review point rather than an open meter. Exclusions and assumptions are written down before we start.
Insights
