This is what we would actually do, in what order, and what it costs.
No discovery call is required to see the number.
What we would go looking for
These are patterns that recur in construction and contracting, written as things to
look for. They are not findings from a named engagement.
Changes directed verbally in the field, built, and never converted into an approved change order, so the cost sits in the job and the revenue never arrives.
Retainage released late or never chased at all, aging past the point anyone remembers the contract it came from.
Back-charges to subcontractors identified on site and never actually applied.
Over- and under-billing on WIP that makes project margin look stable right up until closeout.
Time extensions and delay costs not noticed within the contractual notice period, so a valid claim expires unused.
The sequence
Five weeks for one operating unit. More units run in parallel rather than in
series, so a group does not take five times as long.
Week 1
Intake and reconciliation8 requests written for construction and contracting, alongside the 107 covering the operating spine. We tell you which findings the gaps will limit before any fieldwork starts.
Weeks 2–3
Full pass, not a sampleEvery job in scope is read rather than sampled.
Week 4
Quantification and challengeEach finding sized, and put to whoever owns it before it is written down.
Week 5
Report and walkthroughThe written report, ranked by annual value and by how hard each finding is to act on.
3 core requests written for construction and contracting, inside the full intake.
Anything you do not have can be skipped with a reason — skipping narrows what the
review can conclude, and we tell you where before the work starts rather than after.
Project schedule with contract value and margin — Budgeted versus current forecast.
Work in progress and over/under billing — By project.
Change orders — Raised, approved, disputed and unbilled. Unapproved variations already built are a common concentration of loss.
If any of this is already happening
The review is always worth doing and rarely urgent. It becomes urgent when
something else is happening — and if one of these is, the sequence above compresses
to fit it.
A bonding capacity review, where the WIP schedule is read by someone who knows how to read one
A job that lost money and nobody can say at which point it turned
An owner or generational transition
A bank line renewal against work-in-progress
An audit of a public contract
Who needs to be in the room
Signs it: Owner or president; CFO on anything touching the bonding relationship
Will resist it: Project managers whose job margins become individually visible — worth telling them what the
review is for before they hear it from somewhere else.
Has been asking for it: The controller, and the bonding agent
What it costs
Priced by operating unit — an entity, a location, or a business the accounts are
kept separately for. The second unit costs less than the first because by then the
intake is built, the chart of accounts is understood and the patterns are known.
Purchase order is the primary route — most
buyers this size raise a PO and pay against an invoice on terms. Card and bank
transfer exist for those who prefer them.