Quantity Surveyors Editing and Proofreading Services

The cost report says the forecast final account is £14.2m against a budget of £14.0m. It has said £14.2m for five months. During those five months three variations have been instructed, a subcontractor has gone into administration, and the groundworks came in over. The number has not moved because moving it requires a conversation nobody wants to start, and every month it does not move makes the eventual conversation worse.

We edit what quantity surveyors and cost consultants produce — cost reports and forecast final accounts, risk allowance and contingency documentation, valuation and payment recommendation documents, variation and change cost assessments, cost plans and elemental estimates, tender reports and recommendations, cash flow forecasts and drawdown schedules, final account narratives and settlement recommendations, loss and expense assessments, and client reporting for boards and funders. Our editors work on the number a client will make decisions on.

The forecast at completion is the single figure everything else in a cost report exists to support, and its failure is presenting a point estimate with no visible reasoning. A forecast that does not show what has moved, what is assumed and what is not yet in it cannot be interrogated, so it is either accepted or disbelieved. We work through these so the movement since the last report is set out line by line with its cause, since a forecast that has not changed while events have is the least credible document a QS can issue; so anything known but not yet quantified is listed as a named item with a range and a date by which it will be quantified, because omitting it is the decision that eventually produces the difficult meeting; so the risk allowance is broken into the specific risks it covers with what would release each one, given that a single contingency line invites the client to treat it as savings; so the assumptions the forecast depends on are stated, particularly about programme, since most cost forecasts are secretly programme forecasts; so the range around the number is given with what would move it to each end, as a client making a decision needs the spread more than the midpoint; and so anything the client must decide, with the date it becomes expensive, is listed separately from the reporting. Reports written this way get read by finance directors rather than filed.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including cost information, valuations and client reporting. We are editors rather than quantity surveyors or cost advisers, and we offer no view on values, entitlement or forecasts. What we can do is make the number show its reasoning.