For data centers. The price is agreed before the design stops moving.
A guaranteed maximum price is set early, on drawings that are still catching up with the load. By the time the work starts, the rack density, the cooling and the containment have all been revisited. The estimate stops being a control and becomes a memory, unless every change is written into a baseline you can version and check.
The change order register, as it renders in the product. Fictional project.
The estimate ages faster than the building.
The commercial decisions on a data center are taken at the point where the least is known. The GMP is agreed, the capital is committed, and the design carries on: density per rack is revisited, the cooling approach is revisited, and the routes for power and pipework are drawn properly for the first time.
None of that is unusual and none of it is anyone’s fault. What matters is whether each of those revisions was priced against a baseline that still exists in the form it was signed, or against a spreadsheet that has been edited since. If it is the second, the estimate has stopped doing the one job it was there for.
Both contingency funds against percent complete. Fill above the dashed line is money leaving faster than the work arrives.
Four things that change on a data center GMP.
The baseline is frozen, then versioned.
Version 1 is what you signed. It is never edited. A revision to the cooling approach becomes version 2 with a reason attached, and version 1 stays readable next to it. That is the difference between a record and a spreadsheet.
Every change carries a cause.
A change forced by a load that grew is not the same as a change forced by a drawing that was wrong, and the two are not paid for out of the same fund. The register makes somebody name the cause and signs their name to it.
Coordination changes stop being invisible.
On a services heavy building the expensive changes are the ones nobody argued about: routing, clashes, containment. They arrive as a stream of small items. The register totals them and shows what the stream is worth.
The contingency is read against completeness.
A contingency set against drawings that were still moving is not a number, it is a bet. The runway shows the month the contractor fund empties, as a month rather than a percentage.
Quoted, because the table stops before you do.
A data center GMP is usually larger than the biggest band in the price table. That is the ordinary case for this kind of building rather than an exception to be argued about: projects at that size are quoted, not read off a list. Tell me the GMP and the contract form, and the price follows from those two things.
Open change orders by cause. Cause decides which fund pays, and cause is a judgment somebody has to make and sign.
The same ledger, read by somebody else.
One pay application, six checks.
Send me one pay application and I will run six checks against the schedule of values it came from. Free, one G703, names redacted, written answer in two working days.