Service 01
Know the real number before you commit
Budgets built on rates per square metre fail quietly, then loudly at tender. We build the cost position from measured scope and test it against current market pricing, so the figure you take to a board or a lender survives contact with real returns.
What you get
Feasibility and appraisal budgets
Elemental cost plans to NRM1
Option and scenario testing
The problem
The gap between an early budget and a tender return is rarely caused by the market. It is caused by what the budget quietly left out.
A rate per square metre taken from a scheme with a different structural frame. A site with abnormals nobody priced because no survey had been done. An inflation allowance set at appointment and never revisited across a two year design programme. A contingency that was quietly consumed to make the appraisal work.
None of these are visible in a single headline figure. They only appear when the tenders return, at which point the options are all expensive: value engineer the scheme, re-gear the funding, or accept a margin that no longer exists. An independent cost consultant is worth appointing precisely because they have no reason to keep the number comfortable.
What we produce
Each output is written to be handed to a board, a lender or a joint venture partner without a covering explanation.
Feasibility stage. Area schedule, benchmarked rates tested against comparable schemes, a specific allowance for site abnormals and a stated inflation basis. Enough to decide whether to spend money on design.
Design stages. An NRM1 elemental plan that develops with the design, reissued at each stage with a reconciliation showing what changed, why, and whether it was design development or scope creep.
Before tender. Built off the measured quantities that go into the tender documents, so bids can be compared against a like-for-like benchmark rather than a broad expectation.
A second opinion on a plan prepared by someone else. We test the quantities, the rates, the exclusions and the risk allowance, and report where the plan is exposed.
Priced comparison of design or specification options on a common basis, including the programme and preliminaries effect, which is usually where the real difference sits.
Expenditure profiled against the construction programme, for facility sizing, drawdown planning and equity release timing.
Risk, inflation and abnormals are separate lines. Never one contingency doing three jobs.
A single contingency percentage tells you nothing about what it is covering. Ours are split so each can be argued on its own evidence: design development risk, construction risk, employer change allowance, inflation to the midpoint of construction, and identified abnormals priced individually.
That structure matters when the plan is challenged. A lender asking why the contingency is eight per cent gets a schedule of what sits inside it, not a professional opinion. The same schedule is what allows you to release contingency safely as risks retire, instead of holding it until the end out of caution.
Questions
From an area schedule and a site address. At that point the estimate is a range with the drivers identified, not a single figure, and we say so. What we will not do is issue a precise-looking figure built on assumptions we have not tested, because that number is the one that ends up in the appraisal and gets treated as fact six months later.
Yes, as a test rather than a source. Benchmarks tell you whether a measured build-up is in a sensible range. They do not tell you what your scheme costs, because your basement, your facade specification and your site constraints are not in the benchmark. Where we use a rate directly, at early feasibility for example, the source and the adjustments are stated on the face of the estimate.
Regularly. It is a common instruction from investors and boards before a funding decision. We test the quantities against the drawings, check the rates and the exclusions, look at what the risk allowance is actually covering, and report the exposure. Equally, we are not looking to replace the incumbent, and if the plan is sound we will say that in one page.
Directly. The quantities behind the cost plan become the basis of the tender documents, the tender comparison, and later the assessment of variations. Where a change is priced against the same measured basis used at cost plan stage, the argument about what was included is usually over before it starts.
Related
The measured basis underneath the cost plan, from drawings or from BIM models.
Taking the cost plan to market on terms that let you compare the bids properly.
Holding the position through delivery, against the plan you started with.
Insights
