- Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves – a nice sentiment but not in the 21st Century – look after the pounds – the pence will follow!

One of the three principle project goals – cost certainty – is often just a lucky after thought, rising inflation and rapidly increasing house prices have saved more projects over the last five years than cost management!

But in an economy of slow house growth and some areas of negative growth it is now more important than ever to make sure your project stacks up financially.

It is important to have the right advice from inception to completion. We can advise on initial budgets, package works for competitive tendering, monitor works and process interim payments, advise on final costs, agree final accounts and help with VAT reclamation.

A lot of projects fail commercially because of the misunderstanding at procurement stage, the client believes he has brought everything he needs to complete the works and the contractor having given the pricing process his “best shot” sees the lump sum “estimate” as a starting point for future negotiations!

To avoid this often trod path we produce pricing documents to break each element down into its composite parts, this helps eliminate the “risk” element from the contractor – they can see what they are pricing, it gives an opportunity to compare tenders on a like for like basis, allows mistakes or future costly omissions to be identified and acts as a tool to price any additional works and calculate interim payments on account.

We operate a cost control system that allows the contractor (or package contractor) to price additional works before they are carried out – eliminating the risk of “nasty” surprises at final account stage.

We also offer value engineering service if your project is heading for an overspend before placing orders, once orders are placed it is much more difficult to drive costs downward.

It is always worth reiterating some advice we were given many, many years ago “the cheapest tender isn’t normally the cheapest price in the long run” – caveat emptor!