01
Interim valuations
Assessment of work properly executed, materials on and off site, and retention. Valued against measure, not against the application received, with the difference explained rather than negotiated down.
Service 04
Cost control and variations
No surprises between valuation four and completion
Cost drifts in small increments, then arrives all at once. We value work in place each month, test every variation against the contract and forecast the outturn while there is still time to do something about it.
What you get
Deliverables.
01
Interim valuations and cost reporting
02
Variation assessment and change control
03
Outturn forecasting and contingency drawdown
The problem
Unpriced change is the most expensive thing on a construction site.
Every open variation is a position you will negotiate later, from a weaker place, with less evidence and against someone who has kept better records than you have.
The pattern is familiar. An instruction is given verbally to keep the programme moving. The contractor prices it three months later, at a rate nobody agreed, with a delay claim attached. By then the work is buried, the site team has changed, and the only people who remember the sequence are on the other side of the table.
Meanwhile the cost report shows the contract sum plus an allowance for change, and the project appears to be within budget until the point where it obviously is not. The distance between those two moments is where equity gets lost.
What we do
Monthly discipline, not quarterly surprises.
02
Change control
A single register of every instruction, early warning and potential change, each with a status, a value and an owner. Nothing sits in an inbox waiting to become a claim.
03
Variation assessment
Variations valued using the contract mechanism and the original measured basis, with entitlement tested before value. The first question is always whether the work was already in the scope.
04
Cost reporting
A monthly report showing committed cost, certified cost, anticipated change, remaining risk and forecast out-turn, with the movement since last month explained line by line.
05
Cash flow and drawdown
Expenditure forecast maintained against the live programme, so funding drawdowns and equity releases are planned rather than requested at short notice.
06
Risk and contingency
The risk register carried in the cost report, with contingency released only as risks retire and a clear record of what remains uncovered.
A variation closed in the month it happens costs what it should. The same variation closed at the end is a negotiation.
The whole argument for monthly control
The records that settle a change are made on site in the weeks around it: what was instructed, when, what resource was actually used, what else it disrupted. Those records have a short life. Six months later the same question is answered with opinion and both parties price the uncertainty into their position.
Our reporting is built to force the issue while it is cheap. Open items are visible, aged and valued, and the report says plainly which of them are drifting. It is deliberately uncomfortable reading, because the alternative is a comfortable report and a contested final account.
Questions
Cost control, answered directly.
Can you take over a project mid-contract?
Yes, and it is common. The first exercise is a position audit: what has been certified, what has been instructed but not valued, what is in dispute and what the realistic out-turn is. That report is often uncomfortable, and it is the only honest starting point. Trying to run forward control on top of an unclear historic position simply moves the problem later.
Do you act as contract administrator?
We act commercially: valuations, change, cost reporting and forecasting. Where the appointment requires formal certification under the contract we will discuss the scope carefully at the outset, because the certifying role carries duties to both parties and needs to be set up properly rather than assumed.
How often do you report?
Monthly as standard, aligned to the valuation cycle so the report and the payment are based on the same assessment. On fast-moving or contentious schemes we report more often. By contrast, on a lender-monitored project the reporting is also timed to the drawdown cycle, which is covered under monitoring surveying when we hold that appointment instead.
What if the contractor disputes your valuation?
Then we set out the basis of the assessment against the contract and the measure, and the disagreement narrows to something specific. Most valuation disputes are actually disagreements about entitlement or about what the original scope included, and they resolve quickly once that is separated from the numbers. Where it does not resolve, the record we have kept is what carries the position forward.
Related
What usually comes next.
Final accounts and disputes
Settling on records kept throughout rather than reconstructed at the end.
Quantities and take-off
Remeasurement of contested and varied work.
Commercially contentious projects
Where control has already broken down and the position needs rebuilding.
Insights