Your variance report says favorable. We read the schedule of values.
Hartwood is an independent cost-control firm working only for owners. We review capital projects at food, beverage and bourbon plants: the guaranteed maximum price, the schedule of values, the pay applications, the change orders, the buyout. Three weeks, a fixed fee, and written findings with the line item behind every number.
The owner’s side of the table. The contractor has a full-time cost department paid to protect the contractor’s margin. On most projects there is nobody on your side reading the paperwork that department produces.
Ninety minutes, on your documents · you keep the notes · no chargeA favorable variance is the report you should read hardest.
The variance summary on your capital project is prepared by the party being measured.
Money on a large project is rarely lost to fraud. It is lost to arithmetic nobody on the owner’s side has the hours to check. A schedule of values weighted toward the line items that bill first is defensible on its own. Stacked across twenty pay applications with a dozen others like it, it is the variance.
What happened. A $200M+ food manufacturing expansion reported a favorable variance against its guaranteed maximum price. Underneath it sat eight figures of absorbed overruns and a nine-figure builders-risk gap. None of it was fraud. All of it was recoverable or preventable on the day it happened, and nobody on the owner’s side was looking. Found in three weeks by one reviewer reading every line. We do not name past employers, their clients, or their projects, in any medium. You would want the same discipline applied to you.
Four places the money goes, on almost every project. All four are in documents you already have.
Billed percentages nobody ties back to the field.
Each pay application is a claim about how much of each line item is complete. The continuation sheet is long, the deadline is short, and the percentages get approved because the total looks close to the projection.
Front-loaded lines that bill ahead of the work.
The schedule of values is built by the contractor and approved once. Weight moved into early line items funds the job on your money and quietly weakens your position in every dispute that follows.
Scope you already bought, priced a second time.
Most change orders are legitimate. The ones that are not usually re-price work already carried in the original schedule of values, and they arrive two months after the field decision that caused them.
Savings between the estimate and the awarded subcontract.
Trades routinely buy out below the estimate carried in the guaranteed maximum price. Where that difference lands depends entirely on how the contract handles contingency and shared savings, and on whether anyone checks.
You almost certainly already have the right to look. The contract wrote it down before anyone broke ground.
Article 11 of AIA A102, the standard cost-plus agreement with a guaranteed maximum price, gives the owner access to the contractor’s records for the cost of the work, and keeps those records available for three years after final payment. A review is a right the contract already granted, not a fight you have to start.
The Capital Exposure Review.
Three weeks from complete document delivery. A fixed fee, quoted within 48 hours of the walkthrough.
One senior reviewer reads the contract documents and the billing that follows from them, line by line, and hands you a written record of where the money is exposed and what is still recoverable. We take no fee from a contractor, hold no design scope, and sell no software into the engagement. We do not direct your contractor and we do not add a gate to your schedule. Questions go to you, never to your contractor, unless you ask us to raise them.
The documents your contractor already produces.
Nothing new has to be created for us. If a document exists in your project files, we can read it. If it does not exist, that absence is itself a finding.
- The guaranteed maximum price (GMP) and its exhibits
- The schedule of values, as approved and as revised
- Every pay application and continuation sheet to date
- The change order log, with the backup behind each one
- The buyout log and awarded subcontract values
- The current schedule, plus insurance and bond documents
Findings, in writing, with the line item behind every number.
A document, not a presentation. It goes to you first, and nothing reaches your finance team that you have not read.
- An exposure register: line-item, dollar-quantified, cited to the contract clause or pay application it came from
- Recoverable-cost findings, separated from preventable ones
- A schedule-of-values integrity check against awarded values
- An insurance and bonding gap check
- A one-page summary written for the CFO
- The workpapers, if you ever need them
The guaranteed maximum price, the schedule of values and every pay application go into one place and get reconciled against each other. Exceptions are flagged the same week, not at the end.
Every change order is read against the scope already carried in the schedule of values. The buyout log is compared line by line to the estimate it replaced, and the insurance and bond documents are checked against the contract that requires them.
Findings are written, quantified and cited. You read the draft, we answer your questions, and the one-page summary goes out with your name on it and ours.
The guarantee. If the review does not identify documented exposure of at least the fee, you do not pay the fee. Exposure means line-item, contract-cited findings, defined precisely in the engagement letter.
Three rungs. You can stop after any one of them.
The review stands alone and most owners never go past it. That is a fine outcome for us.
Nobody is moved up this ladder by default. The second rung exists because some owners read their findings and decide they want the same reading every month while the job is still running. The third exists because a few of them get to their next project and want it in place from day one.
Capital Exposure Review
An independent read of an active or recently closed project. The documents go in. Written findings come out.
- Exposure register, line-item and cited
- Recoverable and preventable findings, separated
- Schedule-of-values integrity check
- Insurance and bonding gap check
- One-page summary for the CFO
Owner’s Cost Control
The same reading, every month, while the job is running. Documents are reviewed before you approve payment rather than after closeout, when the money has already gone out.
- Pay application review before approval
- Change orders read against carried scope
- A running exposure register, kept current
- A seat on your side in the meetings you already hold
Owner’s Representative
Owner-side representation for the whole job, priced as a percentage of construction value. We do not sell this to an owner whose project we have not already reviewed.
- Contract and guaranteed maximum price review before signature
- Buyout oversight as the trades are awarded
- Monthly cost control from day one
- Closeout and final accounting
Every rung is fixed and quoted before it starts. You will see the fee before we start, and you will pay that, not it plus a dozen surprises no one tracked. Between projects, the Change Order Desk keeps watch on the change orders that still arrive after the job is running. Monthly, cancel anytime. We are not a claims firm. If a matter ends up in litigation you will need one, and we will hand over the workpapers.
We read every line, not a sample.
A large project bills across thousands of lines and dozens of documents. Sampling is what makes a review cheap everywhere else.
We wrote our own software to pull every line of the schedule of values and every pay application into one register, reconcile them, and flag the exceptions. Then a person reads the exceptions. The instrument decides nothing. It is the reason one senior reviewer can cover a whole project in three weeks instead of sampling a slice of it and calling that a review.
Illustrative data. Not a client engagement, and not a live system.
You get the person whose name is on the findings.
Senior and small. Nobody on this engagement is learning on your project, there is no account manager between you and the person reading your pay applications, and there is no team to fund, so the fee buys review hours instead of overhead.
We came to this from the contractor’s cost office, on large food and beverage work. That is the only place you learn how a guaranteed maximum price actually absorbs an overrun, and it is why a change order takes a week to judge here rather than a month to argue about.
Hartwood Group has three owners. Whoever writes the findings signs them, and answers for them.
Every number in a findings document is read and stood behind by the person signing it. That is the accountability model, not a style choice.
Every line read. The exceptions read twice.
Eli Hart
Every engagement runs under your nondisclosure agreement, signed before we see a document. What we see stays yours, and nothing from one engagement appears in another. No fabricated clients, logos, or testimonials appear anywhere on this site, only work you can verify.
Ninety minutes on your documents. If there is nothing there, we say so and leave.
Bring one thing: your schedule of values and the latest pay application, or the guaranteed maximum price and the change order log. We sign your nondisclosure agreement before we open either. You leave with a one-page exposure memo within 24 hours, and you keep it whether or not you hire us.
- 01Send the project. One paragraph is enough. Or call or text Eli directly: (859) 361-9320.
- 02A 90-minute walkthrough of your documents with the person who would do the review. No slide deck.
- 03A fixed-fee proposal within 48 hours, only if the project warrants a review. If it does not, we tell you that instead.
The terms, stated plainly: you will see the fee before we start, and you will pay that, not it plus a dozen surprises no one tracked. There is nothing to buy afterward.
Received. Thank you.
Your note is with Eli directly. You will hear back within one business day, from a person, with a question about your project rather than a sequence.
If it is urgent, call or text (859) 361-9320.
We answer within one business day. If we are not the right firm for the project, we say so then.