University capital projects: GMP oversight across several buildings at once
A mid sized university might have a science building, a residence hall, a parking structure and a library renovation under construction in the same year. Each is a CM at risk contract with its own GMP. Each has a project manager from the capital projects office, and those project managers report to one director who reports to a vice president for finance and a board of trustees.
The problem is not any single project. The problem is that each project manager keeps the GMP position in a different spreadsheet, and the director spends the week before the trustees meeting reconciling them. This post is about making several GMPs readable on one page without losing what is specific to each.
Different buildings, different risk profiles
A laboratory building carries heavy mechanical and electrical scope, long lead equipment and many allowances for items the researchers have not yet chosen. A residence hall is repetitive, buys out early and rarely surprises anyone after framing. A renovation of a 1960s library carries unforeseen conditions in every wall.
It follows that the same contingency percentage means something different on each. Ten percent of contingency remaining at 60 percent complete is fine on the residence hall and alarming on the library. A portfolio view that applies one threshold to every project will flag the wrong ones. Each GMP needs its own baseline, its own rate of draw and its own exhaustion date, and the portfolio should show those side by side rather than averaged.
The allowance problem on academic buildings
Academic buildings are set at GMP with more allowances than most commercial work. Casework, audiovisual, laboratory equipment hookups, signage, landscaping and furniture coordination are often carried as allowances because the faculty users have not decided. Each allowance has a date by which the decision has to be made, and the date is set by the construction schedule, not by the faculty calendar.
Consider a fictional $95 million engineering building with nine allowances totaling $4.2 million at GMP. If the lab casework allowance was set at 50 percent design, it carries a wide band. If the decision deadline passes while the department chair is on sabbatical, the contractor proceeds on the basis it has, and the reconciliation lands as a change. The capital projects office should keep a register of every allowance with its decision date and its current status, so the deadline shows up two months before it arrives, not after.
Who owns the decision date
The project manager owns tracking the date. The user group owns the decision. The register should name both. A missed allowance deadline is usually an internal failure on the owner's side, and it ends up costing the owner's contingency, so it is worth keeping visible.
What the trustees actually read
Trustees do not read pay applications. They read one page per project, or one table for the whole capital plan, with the approved budget, the GMP, the anticipated final cost and the difference. Anything else is in an appendix. The finance committee might go one level deeper and ask about contingency and pending change orders.
The consistency matters more than the depth. If the science building reports anticipated final cost including pending change orders and the parking structure reports it without them, the table is wrong and nobody in the room knows it. One ledger structure for every GMP, with the same definitions of each line, is what makes the table honest. The director should be able to say that every project in the table computes anticipated final cost the same way.
Keeping the record across staff turnover
University capital offices see project managers come and go over a four year building. When a project manager leaves, the spreadsheet leaves with them, or stays behind without anyone who understands the formulas. Under most AIA A133 based agreements the owner has audit rights and shared savings to reconcile at closeout, and both depend on a record the new project manager can pick up.
A ledger like Costwitness holds each GMP as a frozen baseline with every draw, change order, allowance reconciliation and buyout result logged against it, and shows the portfolio on one page. It applies the same definitions to every project. The people in the office still classify the causes and make the calls. They just stop rebuilding the position every month.
Four things to do before the next trustees meeting
- Write down how each project manager computes anticipated final cost and make the definitions match across all open GMPs.
- Build an allowance register per project with the decision date and the named user group owner for each line.
- Show contingency as an exhaustion date per project rather than one portfolio percentage.
- Confirm which project has the weakest record of change order causes and classify that list first.
Questions on this
Should the university use the same contingency rule on every project?
No. The rule for raising a flag should reflect the building type and design stage at GMP. A renovation and a new residence hall should not share a threshold. What should be the same is the structure of the record, so the projects can be compared on the same terms.
How does the capital office handle a GMP that was set at design development?
Record the design stage in the baseline and expect wider bands on allowances and more design gap changes. Under most contracts the GMP set at design development carries a larger contractor contingency for that reason. The office should watch how that contingency drains against the design completion, not only against percent complete.
Is the contractor's monthly report enough for the trustees?
It is the contractor's view. The trustees are owed the owner's view, which ties each figure to the signed GMP amendment and the university's approved budget. The two views should agree most months. When they do not, the difference is the most useful line on the page.
In the product
Allowance register, Anticipated final cost, Monthly owner report. Free tool: Allowance Confidence Band, Contingency Runway.
Keep reading
Earlier: Developers: how a GMP overrun reaches the equity waterfall. Later: School district bond programs on CM at risk: what the board needs to see monthly. All articles on by owner type.
See it on a project shaped like yours.
Thirty minutes on a call. A fictional project at your GMP size and your contract form, walked module by module.