02 / Services — Commercial Advisory

A second opinion, before it is an expensive one

Independent commercial advice for construction clients — health checks, delivery model selection, procurement strategy and second opinions on live disputes. Priced in the open. Based in Melbourne, working Australia-wide.

Health check
$12,000 fixed
Reviews
Quoted per scope
First pass
2 business days
When Clients Call

Five moments, over and over

The project is going sideways

And nobody internally can say precisely why. The numbers have moved, the programme has slipped, and the reporting is reassuring in a way that answers none of it.

A delivery model needs choosing

And the advice is coming from parties who benefit from the answer.

A tender is about to be issued

And someone senior has a feeling the documentation is not ready. That feeling is usually right.

A claim needs assessing

By someone who was not involved in creating the situation, and who has no stake in how the position was arrived at.

The closeout has stalled

The project finished months ago, the final account is still open, and nobody is pushing it. That money does not collect itself.

Project Health Check

$12,000 fixed. No scoping call required to get that number, because it is the same number for everyone.

  • Full document set read — contract, programme, drawings, registers, cost reports
  • Programme and float position tested against the contract dates
  • Scope gaps that are live, and what they are likely to cost
  • A written report in priority order, deliberately blunt

Delivery model selection

The right model depends on how well documented your design actually is, not on how well documented you hoped it would be by now.

  • Lump sum, construct only, design and construct, managing contractor
  • Risk transfer assessed against your organisation actual capacity
  • The documentation-certainty test applied honestly
  • A recommendation with the trade-offs written down

Risk workshops

Run against your actual documents rather than a generic risk taxonomy — which is why the register gets reopened instead of archived.

  • Facilitated against the contract, programme and design status
  • Every risk carries an owner, a trigger and a dated mitigation
  • Cost and programme impact quantified, not rated vaguely
  • Revisited at agreed intervals, where the value actually sits

Second opinions

Variation claims, delay claims, scope disputes and determinations, assessed on the documents by someone with no stake in the history.

  • Your position stated plainly, including when it is weaker than you were told
  • Assessment against the documents actually tendered
  • The construction analysis your lawyers need in order to advise you
  • Not legal advice — we are clear about that boundary
Procurement

How the work is packaged decides what falls between the packages

Contractors price what they read

If two of them read a gap and one did not, the cheapest price is not the cheapest project.

Submissions compared to the scope

Not to each other summaries. Exclusions that would return as variations get surfaced before award instead of after.

Packaging before pricing

Package strategy and tenderer selection are decided before anyone is invited to tender, not reverse-engineered afterwards.

Documentation adequacy tested first

If the tender set is not ready, issuing it anyway converts a documentation problem into a commercial one.
Melbourne

Second opinions, priced for this market

Melbourne moves quarterly

Tender coverage, contractor appetite and escalation here shift fast enough that last year’s assumptions mis-price this year’s project. Advice is anchored to what the market is doing now.

Local diligence

Delivery model selection, counterparty checks and health checks calibrated to Victorian conditions and Melbourne subcontractor reality. Working in Melbourne →
Fees

Fixed before the work starts

$12,000Project Health Check — fixed lump sum
Per scopeadvisory and one-off reviews
Project Health Check: $12,000A fixed lump sum. Published, not quoted on request.
Advisory and one-off reviewsQuoted per scope, with the quote fixed before work begins.
No contingent feesNo percentage of anything we save you.
Exclusions stated upfrontStatutory fees, authority charges, third-party consultants, legal advice and formal dispute proceedings are excluded and quoted separately.
Advice you pay a share of is advice with an interest in the answer.