Owner's representation and construction advisory
Someone in the room whose only client is you.
Most owners build a handful of projects in a career. The people across the table from you build continuously. Monogram closes that gap: independent construction expertise, working your side of the project, for the length of it.
Start a conversation What we doWhy owners hire us
The information asymmetry is the problem.
A pay application arrives and it is thirty pages of percentages. A change order arrives and it is priced by the party who benefits from the price. A schedule update arrives showing the same completion date it showed last month, with four weeks of float quietly consumed. Each of these is answerable. Answering them takes somebody who has sat on the other side and knows where to look.
Our consultants come from the general contracting side of the industry: preconstruction, estimating, and project operations, with direct experience in market rate multifamily and student housing from garden style through midrise. That background is the entire value. We are not guessing at how a contractor builds a number, because we used to build them.
What you get is not an adversary for your contractor. The best outcome on most projects is a GC who knows the owner has someone competent reading the submissions, which tends to improve the submissions.
What we do
Eight engagements, and the rule that governs all of them.
Owner's representation
Bought by the ownerWe sit in your chair on the project. Design and contractor procurement, meeting leadership, RFI and submittal oversight, change order review, and a weekly written report that tells you what actually happened rather than what was scheduled to happen.
- Contractor and design team procurement
- Weekly owner report and meeting leadership
- Change order and claim review
- Monthly site presence written into the scope
Preconstruction and estimating
Bought by the ownerIndependent budgets and estimate validation before the money is committed. We price the work from the documents you have, at the stage you are actually at, and tell you where the number is soft rather than presenting a total with false precision.
- Conceptual through GMP budget development
- Independent review of contractor estimates
- Scope gap and exclusion analysis
- Value engineering with the cost of each option stated
Pay application review
Bought by the ownerLine by line review of the G702 and G703 against what is in place, with stored materials, retainage, and lien waivers checked before you approve. We walk the work and read the application against it rather than against the last conversation about it.
- Schedule of values review at buyout
- Monthly percent complete verification
- Stored materials and retainage tracking
- Lien waiver and compliance check
Schedule analysis
Bought by the ownerBaseline review, monthly update review, and delay analysis when the dates stop holding. We read the logic, not just the bar chart, and we say plainly whether a claimed impact is supported by the schedule the contractor submitted.
- Baseline logic and sequencing review
- Monthly update and critical path tracking
- Time impact and delay analysis
- Recovery schedule evaluation
Lender update schedule
Bought by the ownerThe schedule your lender actually reads. We take the contractor's monthly update and produce a summary-level schedule and a written variance narrative sized for the draw package: where the job stands against baseline, what moved this month, and what the exposure is on the completion date. It goes out with the pay application instead of a nine hundred line bar chart nobody opens.
- Summary schedule built from the contractor's monthly update
- Written variance narrative, baseline against current
- Completion date exposure stated plainly, not buried
- Formatted to drop straight into the monthly draw package
Near-term schedule
Bought by the contractorThree to six weeks out, built with the people doing the work. We run the lookahead, track constraints and make-ready, and hold the weekly commitments. The master schedule tells you that you are late. The near-term schedule is where you stop being late.
- Rolling three to six week lookahead
- Constraint log and make-ready tracking
- Weekly commitment plan with percent plan complete
- Published in a format foremen will actually use
Takt planning
Bought by the contractorProduction planning on a fixed rhythm. We zone the building, size the takt from real crew production rather than durations someone typed, and sequence the trades so each one moves through the same area on the same beat. On repetitive work it takes variation out of the schedule instead of padding it.
- Zoning and takt sizing from measured crew production
- Trade train sequencing and wagon definition
- Buffer strategy and a written catch-up plan
- Rollout with the superintendent and the foremen
New project type startup
Bought by the contractorFor a general contractor entering multifamily, student housing, or hospitality for the first time. We build the preconstruction and operations framework the type requires, from estimating templates through unit turnover sequencing, before the first project exposes the gaps.
- Estimating templates and historical cost structure
- Preconstruction and buyout process build
- Field operations and turnover sequencing
- Staff coaching through the first project
The work product
What you actually receive.
Advisory is easy to describe and hard to evaluate. These are the documents an engagement produces, in the format they are issued in. Click any one to read it full size.
Sample deliverables. Northfield Commons and Lakeside Inn & Suites are illustrative projects. The documents are real in format and method and fictional in every name, address, party and figure. No client work is shown.
How an engagement runs
Four phases, and the first one is listening.
Whether we join at feasibility or at month fourteen of a project in trouble, the sequence is the same. The difference is only how fast we move through it.
Understand
We read the documents, the contract, and the schedule before we offer an opinion on any of them. On a project already under way that usually takes a week and saves a month.
Establish
Reporting cadence, decision authority, escalation path, and what a complete monthly package looks like. Written down and agreed, so nobody is improvising in month four.
Operate
The recurring work: meetings led, pay applications reviewed, schedule updates analyzed, changes evaluated, and a written report you can forward to a lender or a partner unedited.
Close
Punch, commissioning handover, final change reconciliation, closeout document completeness, and the final payment and retainage release checked against what was actually delivered.
Engagement and fees
Structures published. Numbers quoted.
Monthly retainer for ongoing roles, fixed fee for defined deliverables, hourly for advisory with no commitment. A set number of site visits is written into every monthly scope so presence is a term of the agreement rather than a favor.
Travel beyond those visits is a stated line, never folded into the fee. On multi-project programs it is amortized across the projects.
- Monthly owner's representation retainerQuoted
- Preconstruction and estimating engagementQuoted
- Pay application review, monthlyQuoted
- Schedule analysis, monthlyQuoted
- Lender update schedule, monthlyQuoted
- Near-term schedule management, monthlyQuoted
- Takt planning engagementQuoted
- Delay or claim analysis, per matterQuoted
- New project type startup programQuoted
- Hourly advisory, no retainerQuoted
- Travel beyond the included site visitsQuoted
Boundaries
What we are not.
A consultant vague about the edge of their competence is a consultant who will eventually be standing past it. These are ours, stated before you hire us rather than after.
- One side of the table per project. We advise the builder or we represent the owner, never both on the same project. The first engagement fixes which side we are on and we decline the second.
- We are not architects or engineers. We do not produce design documents and we do not provide design professional opinions.
- We are not a licensed land surveying firm and nothing we produce is a record survey.
- We do not provide legal advice. On claims and disputes we work alongside your counsel, not in place of them.
- We do not act as the constructor. We do not hold trade contracts, carry means and methods responsibility, or direct the work of any employer on site.
- We do not accept commissions, rebates, or referral fees from contractors, vendors, or suppliers on projects we advise. Our fee is the only money we make on your project.
Start a conversation
Tell us what is going on.
The first conversation is free and it is diagnostic, not a pitch. Sometimes the answer is that you do not need us, and we would rather say that in week one than bill you to find out in month three.
If the project is already in trouble, say so plainly. It changes what we read first and how fast we move.
Prefer email
Service area
Connecticut base, working nationwide. Monthly site presence is written into the scope, and travel beyond the included visits is quoted as its own line.