01
Initial appraisal
Pre-facility review of the cost plan, the programme, the procurement route, the contract terms, the professional team and the appointments, with the residual risks stated plainly.
Service 05 · Lender side
Development monitoring surveying
Know what you are lending against, and keep knowing
Five products sit behind one appointment. Initial appraisal before the facility is committed, drawdown certification against work genuinely in place, monthly progress reporting written for a credit team, an independent cost to complete, and verification of the settled account at the final release.
What you get
Deliverables.
01
Initial appraisal and facility adequacy
02
Drawdown certification and progress reporting
03
Cost to complete and final account verification
The problem
By the time a development loan is visibly in trouble, the options have already closed.
Cost overruns and programme slippage are visible in the data months before they become visible in the outcome. The question is whether anyone independent is reading it.
A borrower under pressure has every incentive to present the position optimistically: value the work generously, defer the difficult variations, keep the programme narrative intact. None of that is necessarily dishonest. It is simply what happens when the party reporting on the scheme is the party who needs the drawdown released.
The lender then finds out at the point where the remaining facility no longer completes the building, which is the one situation with no good options in it.
The appointment
From initial appraisal to practical completion.
02
Facility adequacy
An assessment of whether the facility, the contingency and the profile actually complete the scheme, including the costs that sit outside the building contract and are routinely understated.
03
Drawdown certification
Each drawdown assessed against work properly executed on site, materials, and costs properly incurred, with the certificate issued to the timetable your credit process requires.
04
Progress reporting
Periodic reports covering progress against programme, cost against facility, change, quality observations and the risks to completion, in the format your credit team already uses.
05
Cost to complete
An independent view of what remains to be spent, maintained through the facility, so the sufficiency question is answered every period rather than at the end.
06
Final account verification
Undisclosed claims tend to surface at the final release. We verify the settled account against the contract and confirm that the figure being certified is the figure that was actually earned, alongside retention, defects and close out.
If we monitor for you on a scheme, we will not act for the borrower on it. Ever, and in either order.
The rule that makes the certificate worth something
Monitoring is only useful if the party certifying the drawdown has nothing to gain from it being released. That is not a matter of professional judgement. It is a matter of structure, so we treat it as an absolute rule rather than a case-by-case assessment.
One side per project, declared in writing at appointment. If we hold a cost planning or cost control appointment on the borrower side of a scheme, we will decline your monitoring instruction on it and tell you why. On a different scheme with the same developer we may be on either side, and you will be told that before you appoint.
Questions
Monitoring, answered directly.
Who pays for the monitoring surveyor?
The borrower normally bears the cost under the facility agreement, but the appointment, the duty and the reporting line are to the lender. That distinction is written into the appointment and it is the reason the reports are usable in a credit paper. Being paid through the facility does not change who we act for.
How quickly can you produce an initial appraisal?
It depends on the completeness of the information pack and the scale of the scheme. What we will tell you at the outset is a date we can actually meet, and if the pack is missing something material we will say what is missing rather than issuing a qualified report that quietly covers the gap.
Do you report in our format?
Yes. Most lenders and funds have a report structure their credit process depends on, and we work to it. Where you do not have one, we issue our standard structure: progress against programme, cost against facility, change, cost to complete, risks and recommendation.
What happens if the scheme goes wrong?
The reporting escalates and gets more specific: what the shortfall is, what is driving it, what the realistic completion cost now looks like, and what the practical options are. We report the position as we find it, including where that is unwelcome. A monitoring surveyor who softens a report to keep a relationship comfortable is worth nothing to the party relying on it.
Related
Where this fits.
Lenders and funds
The full picture of what we do on the lender side of a transaction.
Cost planning and estimating
What we test when we appraise a borrower's cost plan.
Independence and conflicts
Why we decline instructions, and how we tell you.
Insights