The monthly report an owner's rep hands to each client

A client hires an owner's representative and, most months, the only thing the client sees from that engagement is a report. The rep has reviewed the pay application, walked the site, argued about a change order and chased an allowance decision. The client sees a PDF. The quality of the PDF is the client's whole experience of the service.

That argues for treating the report as a product with a fixed structure, rather than a memo written fresh each month. This post lays out the structure, page by page, for a GMP project, and explains why the last page matters most.

Page one: where the contract stands

The first page is a table, not prose. Original GMP. Executed change orders, as one line with the count. Current GMP. Pending change orders and PCOs, as one line with the count. Anticipated final cost. Client's approved budget. The difference between the last two. Each figure with last month's value beside it.

That table answers the question every client asks first. It also disciplines the rep, because it can only be produced if the underlying record is current. A rep who has to estimate the pending PCO total has found out something about their own record before the client does.

Pages two through four: the three ledgers

Page two is contingency. Both funds, contractor and owner, each with opening balance, draws this month, draws to date, balance and projected exhaustion date against the completion date. Below that, the draws this month with cause and backup status. A draw approved with a backup flag is listed as such.

Page three is change orders and PCOs, grouped by cause: owner scope, design gap, unforeseen, coordination. Each group with executed total, pending total and the oldest unclassified item. The rep should be able to say that no PCO has sat without a cause for more than thirty days, and if one has, say why.

Page four is allowances and buyout. Allowances with carried amount, reconciled amount or projected variance, and decision date with the named decision owner. Buyout with coverage percentage and any package bought above or below its GMP line since last month. On a fictional $27 million charter school, the rep might show that buyout reached 90 percent this month with a net saving, and that the kitchen equipment allowance needs a decision from the client by the fifteenth.

Keep the same order every month

A client who reads the report in the same order every month learns to read it fast. Reordering pages to lead with good news, or to bury a bad month, costs the rep the client's trust in the document. The structure is the service.

Page five: flags raised and flags closed

Page five is a short list. Each flag raised this month, what triggered it, what the rep did about it, and whether it is open or closed. Each flag from prior months that is still open. A flag is a rule that was crossed: contingency below a threshold, a PCO without a cause past the deadline, an allowance decision date within sixty days, a pay application line ahead of progress. The rep's job is to look at each one and decide whether it matters.

This page is where the client sees the rep working. It is also the page that protects the rep later, because it shows that the issue was seen, raised and handled on a date. Under most AIA A133 based agreements the owner's rights depend on notice and timing, and this page is the owner's side of that record.

Page six: what the client has to decide

The last page is a list of decisions the client owes, with the date each is due and what it costs to miss it. An allowance selection. A change order approval above the client's threshold. A response on a disputed cause. A decision on whether to pursue a design gap recovery. This page is short and it is the one the client should read if they read nothing else.

Building these six pages from the contractor's Procore exports, the G703 and three spreadsheets takes a project manager days each month, and the order drifts. Costwitness holds the client's ledger in the structure above and produces the report from it, with last month beside this month, the flags page from the rules, and the decisions page from the open items. The rep still classifies the causes, reviews the draws and writes the sentence under each table. The pages are already in order.

In the product

Monthly owner report, Anticipated final cost, Contingency ledger. Free tool: Pre-GMP Readiness Score, Change Order Exposure.

Keep reading

Earlier: Family office real estate: oversight without a construction department. Later: Municipal owners: city halls, public safety buildings and the GMP. All articles on by owner type.