International Project Management

  • Client representative. Setting and thereafter maintaining cost and time limits to all construction and consultant activities
  • Formulate project budget
  • Distribution of operational responsibility and their related contractual costs
  • Supervision, control and valuation of any approved variations
  • Supervision of construction and engineering works according to contract, implementation and removal of defects

Commercial Management

  • Extensive experience with evaluation methods of financial reporting (Excel spreadsheets), personnel planning, progress and logging of construction priority commercial working procedures
  • Payment certification, programming and planning using power project management
  • Use of up to date computer soft- and hardware

Construction cost calculation and Property valuation

We, cpcm, are Professional Chartered Surveyors (MRICS) in property valuation, better known in Germany as Immobiliengutachter/-analyst

Important notice to all property investors: Why is construction cost calculation in accordance with DIN 276 KG 300+400 necessary?

  1. In Germany, to obtain financing for your investment DIN 276 is the property valuation basis used by the banks, i.e. no DIN 276 = No Bank financing.
  2. You will not get planning permission! The DIN 276 valuation is a legal requirement required by the local planning authorities, namely the German ‘Bauamt’.
  3. The detailed cost plan based on the planning and layout drawings invariably exceed the architect’s first estimates. This also automatically allows the Architect to increase his fees immediately under the HOAI! Only after our professional property valuation is it possible to reduce the budget without affecting quality. This is achieved via Value Engineering.

Purchasing

  • Cost Planing, Estimating and Value Engineering
  • Formulate Bills of Quantities. Measurement/evaluation of construction works in accordance with regulatory building standards e.g. Deutsche Industrie Norm (DIN)
  • Submit tender enquiries to selected list of subcontractors
  • Selection and valuation of supply only items; Analysis and valuation of quotations - National and International

Pricing

  • Compile Built up unit rates (Labour, plant, materials, overheads and profit), negotiate discounts, provision of provisional sums, summarising construction costs as required by Governing Body eg. German Cost Grouping Procedures (DIN 276), or BSI in the UK
  • Bid analysis and recommendation of most competitive unqualified quotation

Monthly Valuation and Final accounts

  • Submission of quotations, variations and late payment reminders as set out in contract
  • Checking payment of invoices, Bank credit organisation, profit/loss and liability assessment,anticipated risk analysis and liquidation protection
  • Cash-Flow-Analysis particularly for major long term budgeting requirements from banks
  • Budget reappraisal - from feasibility to forecasting project completion costs

Contracts Management

  • Recommendation of form of contract and explanation of contractual duties of parties
  • FIDIC, VOB, VOL, HOAI, ICE, JCT e.g. FIDIC clause 5 - Contract Documentation to clause 67 Settlement of Disputes, or HOAI in Germany
  • Accumulation of competitive quotations and contract negotiation
  • Contractual deadlines, assessing dates for start/completion of trade works
  • Allocating cost responsibility for new/fixed price works, creditors etc.
  • Construction insurance, guarantee bonds, defects liability, retention bonds
  • Completion of formal contractual agreements for main contracts and consultants

Claims Management

  • Claims preparation and submission of additional cost reimbursement within the various forms of contract when contractually valid
    Recovery of liquidated and ascertained damages
  • Construction programming and critical path analysis

Due Diligence

Unbiased technical and professional advice is essential and always required prior to signing a real estate contract, especially in view of the complexity and technicallity of the buildings involved, the contract laws and regulations that affect real estate transactions.

The objective of due diligence is to identify the site compliance with respect to current planning regulations, codes and the design or property survey required. Due diligence investigates the real estate property conditions from the following perspectives:

  • Cadastral
  • Technical (building systems)
  • Health, safety and environmental

Due diligence, which could be more accurately termed "site assessment", compares the actual current state of the property with its description as recorded in official documents and clears up any discrepancies which may be found.

Due diligence is carried out prior to the acquisition of the property and is aimed at determining the potential costs which may be incurred in the event of non-compliance or potential and/or actual liabilities.

cpcm, a leader in this field, applies an assessment approach in the initial phase called Property Report and Survey or preliminary due diligence. This approach allows a determination, in a relatively short period of time, of the general condition of a property, assessing the site compliance with respect to current existing status or new design also establishing and considering the buget and future costs. Such consideration should be made when there is an interest in the further new construction design procurement or purchase of the existing property.

This in essence, documental audit is a preliminary instrument, used not only by purchasers but also by sellers in order to select the properties that can be put on the market and sold with success in the short term or alternatively consider the long term life cycle cost over say a 30 year period.

Construction Programming – Delay Analysis

cpcm provide the client with the benefits of critical path analysis and base claim analysis on 'as-planned impacted' method of delay analysis.
The 'as planned impacted' technique operates by adding or 'impacting' delays onto the planned programme.
cpcm evaluates the effects of change/delays to the contract, incorporates activities into a computer-generated programme and then reschedules to produce a revised completion date.

Advantages and risks

The technique tends to work well when activities are largely sequential and the logic is prescriptive. For example, when constructing a high rise concrete framed building, the contractor will have little, if any, opportunity to vary the planned sequencing and therefore the results of any 'as-planned impacted' delay analysis may well reflect what actually occurred and would thereby produce a fair and reasonable conclusion.

However, it should be noted that if only employer delay events are impacted onto the baseline programme, no account will be made for the contractor's own delay (or, for that matter, any mitigation and/or acceleration measures undertaken).

It is often observed that when this form of analysis is carried out, it produces a revised completion date much later than the date of actual completion of the project. Contractors usually suggest that this is evidence of the success of their acceleration or mitigation measures but, more often than not, it is probably more likely to be evidence of the theoretical nature of the methodology.

If the links between activities are wrong, or more likely, what happens if there are a variety of ways of linking the activities – none of which are 'wrong' but all of which differ depending on the assumptions made about how the work will be resourced and carried out?

Apparently similiar programmes can produce different results when a change event is added, because the links were based on different assumptions. In these circumstances it can be very difficult to say which of the two results is right and which is wrong. cpcm can agree on a baseline-linked programme.

It is important to keep in mind that the critical path can (and is likely to) change during the project. If the actual critical path does not correlate to the baseline programme upon which the analysis is based, then the results of that analysis will have little or no relationship to the actual events occurring on site at the time of the change.

Only someone with expertise in programme analysis (and in possession of all the back-up information), will be able to plan and thereafter contractually demonstrate how the analysis has been performed. If hidden mistakes (accidental or deliberate) exist in the analysis then these may have dramatic effects on the results being shown. As always with this subject, it is a case of 'handle with care'.

cpcm provides professional construction programme planners with the essential support derived from complex construction project experience.

Construction Risk Management

cpcm provides analysis of risks and makes critical recommendations on contract awards, design and construction contracts, proactive prevention of cost/value overspend.

Scenario:

The project decision to build has been made, but contracts for development, design, realisation, and operation still have to be authorised.

We will prepare a budget, provide competative pricing and complete a risk contingency allowance. Monthly risk analysis and cost reports analyses in accordance with the quantity surveying methods directed by the RICS. The risk management will optimise total profitability.

How we do this:

You will recieve a detailed cost budget based on up-to-date comparable objects and your scope conditions required for the project. This cost plan will give much higher cost security than the designers' estimate, even at an early project stage. We will prepare an investment budget whilst maintaining your design function requirements. We will continuously cost moniter alternatives and find the most risk free and profitable solutions.

At all stages of the contruction the costs of a project shall be checked continually. The investment and operating costs are to be controlled within the expected profit margin.

Cpcm will deliver watertight contract verifications with clear information and recommendations furnished by one of the most experienced contract and change order management experts for construction projects in the profession.

We will adapt our services to the individual requirements and circumstances of your project.

We can also supply you with sample contracts including preliminary remarks, which are based on experience extracted from hundreds of previous construction projects.

We will support you in the decisive stages of the contract awards (award strategies, contract award negotiations).

We will assist you and your lawyers with the preparation of design, construction, operational, lease, or purchase contracts regarding the required technical contents and by checking the construction-specific parts of the contracts.

Your advantage: The risk management will optimise total profitability.

Technical Translations

The problem with most technical translations is that they simply are incorrect. How often do native speakers find themselves shaking their heads when reading translated documents?

Most translation specialists take any contract that comes through the door and perform the translation on a word for word, line for line basis. It does not matter how professional the stamp on the document looks if the content is misleading. Many translation firms rely on the fact that personnel within the client's company have neither the ability nor time to find these mistakes. As a result, the customers you are trying to communicate with and support simply do not understand what you are trying to tell them.

Take for example a majour language like English. If a computer manual has to be translated, it must be translated in such a way that it can be understood by anyone reading it who speaks English, not just by users whose mother tongue is English.

Technical documents have to be translated as per the exact specification requirements. Without this, the functional requirements of the system simply cannot to be achieved. Legal documents have to be translated as per the actual terms of the contract to avoid future disputes in regard to weak or incorrect interpretations. Technical and Legal documents require experts within their own field. They must have a high linguistic ability plus a clear insight into various readers ability to understand.

If a text has to be translated from German into English, the work shall be done by a native English speaker with at least ten years experience in the German language.

Finally, as part of our quality assurance we offer you a correction guarantee as standard. Should you have any doubts over parts of your translation, we shall obtain the opinion of a third party and make any necessary alterations at no extra cost.

Facility Management

When you are running a business, making a capital investment in your facility, planning a company relocation or construction project, ensuring minimal disruption to your business while managing running costs and risk are key. We project manage these risks and challenges so that you can make cost-efficient decisions and not overlook any key details.

Via our process improvement module we implement the latest technology to address the costs and problems with your existing process. As chartered surveyors MRICS, best professional practices are assured. Your maximum ROI is achieved with increased property value by our enviromental considerations and the implementation of carbon free buildings.

How we do this? Our improvements begin by documenting existing processes. From there we use process model templates as a baseline. Next, cpcm adds industry best practices and leverages technology. This creates optimum life cycle technology and enabled processes that deliver a new, refined plan for optimal results to your company, university or healthcare facility.