Stop Treating the First Estimate as the Last Word

An estimate priced at the start of a job is a snapshot of costs and conditions on the day it was written. Materials move, programmes slip, and instructions change, and none of that waits politely for you to notice. If nobody goes back and checks the estimate against reality as the job runs, the first time anyone finds out it was wrong is at final account, which is the worst possible time to find out.

Build reviews into the programme

A cost review is not a crisis response, it is routine maintenance. Set fixed points in the programme, monthly or at key stages, where you sit down and compare what was priced against what is actually happening on site. That includes checking material costs against current supplier pricing, checking labour hours against actual progress, and checking provisional sums against what has really been instructed.

What a proper review looks for

A good review is not just adding up invoices. It checks whether the original assumptions still hold, whether variations have been priced and agreed rather than just built, and whether contingency has been eaten into faster than the programme suggests it should be. Structuring the review along NRM2 lines makes it far easier to see exactly which part of the job is running hot.

Contractual obligations do not pause for a busy week

Most contracts carry clear obligations around notifying cost movement and agreeing variations before they are built. Skipping a review because the job is busy does not remove that obligation, it just means you find out about a breach later, usually when it is harder and more expensive to fix.

The mistakes that keep repeating

The same errors turn up job after job: reviewing costs against the original estimate instead of the latest agreed one, letting provisional sums roll on unchecked, and treating a review as something to do only when a client asks for one. A review that only happens under pressure is not a review, it is damage control.

Reviewing an estimate regularly is not extra admin bolted onto a job, it is how you keep control of the number you are ultimately responsible for. Catch drift early and it is a conversation. Leave it to final account and it is a dispute.

See a sample estimate and you will see exactly the level of detail we expect a proper review to be checked against.

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