Construction Cost Review and Advisory Services Practice

EAS provides advisory services to owners, developers, and lenders focused on evaluating and assessing construction programs, projects and costs, resolving issues and disputes originating from large complex construction programs and projects. Our multi-discipline team of professionals combines their skills to identify and evaluate not only the nature and appropriateness of the costs themselves, but also the nature of the activities from which the costs arise. We then use the complete understanding of the costs and underlying activities to ensure adherence to construction contracts and to control costs resulting from those agreements.

We provide our services to private, public, governmental and quasi-governmental clients and regularly represent owners, investors and developers with their program and project needs. We have audited a wide range of construction costs on projects ranging from a few million dollars to projects in excess of $4 billion. We are also regularly called upon to apply our services on a programmatic basis across multiple programs.

Whether we are ensuring the appropriateness of billings or costs, our clients receive assurance that their contractual rights are being adhered to, complied with and appropriately accounted for pursuant to the terms of the agreements they have entered. All of our services concentrate on assessing contractor and vendor adherence to the financial, compliance and performance terms, conditions and provisions of agreements entered into by our clients.

Established Processes and Procedures

As a result of our significant specific contract compliance experience, our clients are able to leverage a deep understanding and knowledge base of processes and procedures thus avoiding a “learning curve” and process development costs. Our clients benefit from seasoned specialists who thoroughly understand different types of construction costs and contracting methods along with the associated risks that each specific contracting method presents. This insight enables us to deliver a more targeted and thorough audit focused on costs that present the highest degree of risk to a project or program.

Construction Cost Review Service Approach

Our construction cost review process consists of a series of steps that audit, analyze and compare contractors’ charges to the terms of the underlying contracts. Our professionals review and compile your contractors’ charges, separate them into source components, measure them against the specific financial terms of the underlying contracts and scrutinize them based on the contract terms. After which, we identify and separate costs that are allowable by contract terms and costs that are not. During the process, our team assembles and generates full documentation which is presented to project management and owners in order to clearly demonstrate and document amounts billed in excess of contract terms. We provide project owners with complete detail as to our findings as well as recommended courses of action in order to recover amounts billed in excess of contract terms along with corrective action in order to ensure future compliance. If requested, we will provide support to project owners to present, discuss and resolve findings with contractor representatives in an effort to successfully recover amounts billed in excess of the agreed terms.

Contingent upon the course of action dictated by project owners and contractor response, we will provide additional support services, as requested, commensurate with the course of action desired to be taken by project management or owners. This assistance often includes settlement and negotiation with contractors, support to operations and procurement departments and legal action by project owners.

Construction Cost Review Process

Over the past 30 years, we have developed and refined standard approaches, processes and procedures to auditing costs that are customized for the unique circumstances surrounding each construction project and contract. Our Contract Compliance Services team focuses on providing assurance that construction costs audited are commensurate with the terms and conditions of underlying contracts and appropriate based upon the underlying agreements. To the extent that costs do not correspond with the terms and conditions of underlying contracts or should be borne by another party, we identify both the specific cost as well as the cause of it and then focus on providing sufficient basis for resolving issues.


OUR PRACTICE