Project Management
Services
Helping eliminate conflicts before they even happen.
With projects becoming larger and more complex, the construction industry often suffers from issues such as cost overruns and delays that create an unnecessary burden.
In order to bring projects to successful completion, a wide range of highly specialized skills is required. Revay understands that our clients' in-house resources are often stretched thin with their day-to-day responsibilities. Therefore, we can supplement our clients' teams by providing a variety of project management services. Our experience helping clients resolve complex construction issues allows us to provide a unique perspective and insight when we're involved in project management mandates on ongoing projects.
Revay approaches project management mandates with a view to helping clients avoid disputes. Some of the project management services that we can provide to owners, contractors and design firms are:
- Planning and scheduling
- Contract administration and oversight
- Change and claims management, including review, analysis and assessment
- Project monitoring and reporting, including lifecycle cost, schedule and progress control
Planning and Scheduling
At Revay, we believe it is important that project schedules represent realistic plans and tell the truth. It is also important that actual progress be measured against what was planned throughout a project in order to identify problems and apply corrective measures. Reliable plans are necessary to avoid, mitigate or, identify delays as early as possible.
We can provide clients with sound advice regarding scheduling specifications, schedule development, updating schedules and a wide range of other schedule related matters.
We're frequently engaged by our contractor clients to develop schedules and provide scheduling services on ongoing projects. We can also act as a third-party master scheduler or perform schedule monitoring services on ongoing projects for our owner clients.
Revay brings first-hand experience on the issues and challenges that consistently result in claims. Therefore, we can assist in maintaining the records required for quantifying and demonstrating the impacts of delays.
Contract Administration and Oversight
The expertise Revay has acquired through our core business of dispute resolution is directly integrated into our contract administration mandates, with an aim to avoiding or minimizing disputes.
In Revay's experience, the primary purpose of contract administration is to validate that the contractual requirements are being met by all parties. This requires detailed tracking and management of the different parties' deliverables throughout the life of the project. Revay has assisted clients by helping them put in place contract compliance trackers, which allow for quick identification of upcoming activities, obligations or actions by all parties and on all contracts.
Revay focuses on other important aspects when providing ongoing contract administration such as:
Documentation
Accurate and timely reporting, in the appropriate format
Invoicing and tracking
Using various project controls techniques that help streamline the payment process
Communication between all parties
Effective relationship building between all project stakeholders in support of dispute avoidance or effective negotiation
Front-end planning
The path to owner's cost, schedule, and quality objectives being met
Revay has successfully performed contract administration work on projects ranging from $100 million to more than $8 billion. Clients have typically integrated Revay into project teams, where we've provided a level of service and a skill set that helped improve project performance.
Change Management
Throughout our more than 50 years in the construction industry, we've seen how change orders can often lead to claims. We've assisted our clients in addressing and managing changes. In doing so, we focus on the avoidance, management and tracking of changes, and change order approval.
Avoidance
In Revay's experience, dispute avoidance starts at the contract preparation stage and includes comprehensive scope definition, the development of realistic schedules and budgets, and well-defined change management procedures. Avoidance is also achieved by the early identification of problems, delays and other deviations. This allows for appropriate action to be taken to minimize potential claims and change order requests. Through early involvement in projects, Revay can assist clients in preparing tender packages, schedules and specifications that could reduce future project changes and claims.
Management and Tracking
To minimize the impact of changes and maximize control of the change approval process, Revay helps clients set up workflow management systems. Tracking of past, present and potential future changes is an area of focus for Revay, providing clients with accurate forecasts and trends for projects.
Change Order Approval
The approval of change orders requires an in-depth understanding of each change, as well as an appreciation of the best approach to achieve approval or resolution. The relationship between the parties and the progress of the project are also factors that need to be considered. The cost of resolving any dispute increases the longer it takes to resolve. Revay therefore works with our clients to focus on quickly arriving at approvals or negotiated settlements. This includes assisting in the analysis and preparation of change orders that meet the contract notification periods and requirements, demonstrate cause and effect and incorporate reasonable time and cost calculations.
Project Monitoring and Reporting
Revay is particularly skilled at presenting complex information in a simple format for the benefit of all parties, including stakeholders who may not have a background in the technical matters being presented. In our experience, a graphical presentation integrates large volumes of information and facilitates comprehension of complex subject matter.
Our consultants are experienced in preparing written reports, either on an ad hoc basis or as part of regular progress reporting. Progress reports developed and maintained by Revay for our clients include:
- Design and construction progress
- Schedule review and analysis
- Change and variation reporting
- Key issues and potential problems
- Risk registers
- Dashboard of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
- Consolidation of information from multiple stakeholder groups
Revay works with our clients to develop monitoring tools required for their specific projects, such that the information can be easily incorporated into a global report that may also include health and safety, environmental, quality and other areas of the project. We've helped our owner and contractor clients prepare and consolidate this information on a regular basis throughout project lifecycles.
We've provided these services to different types of clients, including owners, owners' representatives, contractors, subcontractors and suppliers.
Supporting this range of clients has given Revay a 360-degree view of construction projects and the issues faced by the different stakeholders. Revay's diverse project experience allows us to take the relevant best practices from one industry or region and apply them to the benefit other projects, bringing further value to our clients.