An owners representative is involved in all aspects of a project, including pre-construction activities, construction administration and post-construction. The owners representative understands the client's goals and priorities, and ensures that all project consultants are in line with these goals. The owners rep manages the human resources according to the target capacity, budget, time frame, and quality of the project. They are on-site throughout the project, but in contrast to a GC or CM, they oversee the entire project from pre-construction to close-out, not just construction. An owners representative typically manages the Construction Manager and/or the General Contractor on behalf of the client. Essentially, the owners representative becomes an extension of the client's internal team and is able to guide all consultants in accordance with the client's goals.

Why You Need An Owner's Rep

• Guidance to build the right team for your project
• Monitor the teams focus on the project
• Owner's Vision and budget
• Provide communication and translation between all aspects and parties
• Allow Ownership to focus on core business while the project progresses
• Facilitate project organization, communication, coordination, and transparency
• Manage and Coordinate all professionals
• Work to ensure all team members are working efficiently with reasonable deadlines
• Provide all size Owners/Developers with a sophisticated level of internal team management
• Minimize concern of internal employees leaving mid-project, we are always here
• Utilize proven best practice methods to organize the project process and increase efficiency

Every project needs an accurate budget. Regardless of the size or scope of the project, a valid cost estimate can successfully establish an accurate project budget from an early stage and allow your organization to appropriately benchmark that budget throughout the course of a project. In order to be sure your estimate is valid, the estimator must have an understanding of multiple aspects of the specific job that will impact its cost. These aspects include but are not limited to labor, materials, location, schedule, and site conditions. Understanding the skill sets, labor rates, and required man-hours is essential. This includes any specialized expertise or certifications needed.

Materials - Knowing the types, quantities, and costs of materials is fundamental. This also involves considering potential price fluctuations and availability.

Location - Different regions have varying costs for labor and materials. Local conditions can also affect logistics and transportation costs.

Schedule - Estimators need to factor in the project timeline, as it affects both labor and materials costs.

Site Conditions - The nature of the site, including any unique characteristics or challenges, can significantly affect costs.

Your cost estimator should have the unique ability to price various options within the project in order to recommend the best path forward based on the schedule and cost impacts. It is also imperative that the estimator possesses an understanding of market trends including escalation and tariffs. Using these benchmarks, it is the cost estimator's role to provide insights into future or potential unforeseen costs that could impact your project. Having an independent cost estimator engaged before the design has been completed allows the project team to make key decisions based on informed and detailed analysis.

Cost Estimation Excellence
"A keen understanding of cost dynamics and market movements lies at the heart of every successful construction project."

Expertise - Our expertise in cost analysis is unparalleled, ensuring your vision is realized without financial overreach. We keep our finger on the pulse of the construction industry, providing you with the assurance that your project will glide smoothly from blueprint to reality, free from the worries of cost inflation and unexpected shifts.

Deep Insights - Delving into the depths of market intelligence, we harness insights from leading General Contractors (GCs), the PPI Index, and esteemed sources like Blue to navigate the ebb and flow of raw material costs. Our commitment to precision extends to labor cost estimation, where we draw from municipal records and trusted databases to forecast with fidelity.

Peer Reviews - Our vigilant peer reviews are the cornerstone of our accuracy. We meticulously scrutinize every digit and decimal in our cost estimates, ensuring that each quantity and unit cost stands up to rigorous examination. We measure bid proposals against the solid yardstick of industry standards and historical precedents, pinpointing opportunities for cost refinement.

With these strategic approaches, Watchdog stands as a beacon of cost-efficiency, illuminating the path for our clients to make savvy decisions at every turn of their project's journey. Place your trust in us to steer your project with fiscal foresight and strategic acumen, keeping you ahead of the curve and within the bounds of your budget.

A project schedule is a timetable that organizes tasks, resources and due dates in an ideal sequence so that a project can be completed on time. A project schedule is created during the planning phase and includes the following: A project timeline with start dates, end dates and milestones. Overall, project scheduling is a key component that propels the completion and delivery of projects within time and budget.

Logic is the biggest driver in a properly constructed schedule. Planning and care must be taken to ensure that the logic is accurate and that false or soft logic is not used. Hard logic is the only valid form of logic to use within a schedule; any false or soft logic defeats the effectiveness of the tools used and will need to be modified during schedule execution.

This is what a project schedule does. It brings together all the project-related information in one place that opens doors for seamless communication between the project manager and stakeholders.

Project scheduling also enables task prioritization. The initial steps of project scheduling comprise forming a work breakdown structure and dividing the project into simpler tasks. Once the tasks are enlisted, the project manager can implement the appropriate technique to evaluate the criticality of the tasks and arrange them in order of precedence.

In addition, the detailed description of each task and skill demand against them makes it easy for managers to procure the right resources for the right job. Not just that, with real-time information of the project's progress, they can gauge the resource performance and take remedial measures in case of any inconsistencies.

The internal team conflicts are minimized when the entire team, stakeholders, and managers are on the same page. Resources are aware of the task dependencies and work diligently to ensure that the overall delivery is not affected.

The basic construction of a schedule revolves around a proper approach to its development. The approach should be structured in a way that is simple to understand and yet provides enough detail for the experienced to glean the requirements used. This report discusses tried and true approaches that have been developed through years of analyzing and refining processes for schedule development. This approach provides the structure to implement proven best practices to building an executable schedule. We delve into this step-by-step approach by:

1. Developing the work breakdown structure (WBS)
2. Defining work packages
3. Defining activities
4. Defining logic
5. Defining resources and work
6. Defining timeframe
7. Defining Deliverables
8. Analyzing the schedule

Project scheduling techniques are beneficial to secure the project timeline and budget without over or underutilizing the workforce. Your resource pool is the success driver of the project, and thus, it is vital to keep their productivity and well-being in check. Creating a project schedule comes in handy to ensure that no resource is burned out or sitting idle.

Scheduling Techniques:

• Critical Path Method (CPM)
  This technique is purely based on mathematical analysis and lets you calculate the longest and shortest possible project timeline.
• Fast-tracking
  Often you are caught in a predicament where the project runs on tight deadlines or gets delayed due to various internal reasons. In such situations, managers study and analyze the critical path and evaluate the tasks that can be done in parallel or overlapped. It allows them to finish multiple tasks at once without affecting the project's scope and deadline.
• Crashing
  Crashing is a tricky duration-compression technique. It involves adding more resources to specific tasks to expedite the project's delivery.
• Simulation
  On the contrary to the critical path method, simulation is used when the project attributes like deliverables and interdependencies are unclear. Simulation allows you to gauge multiple scenarios by changing one or two variables.
• Resource optimization
  Workforce, their skills, and their effort drive the project's success. Thus, managers must tap into the right potential and leverage their talent to the maximum extent. At the same time, keeping their utilization in check is of utmost importance. If resources are underutilized, it causes lower productivity and unplanned attrition. Overutilization, on the other hand, can cause fatigue and burnout.

In conclusion, here are additional items we will leverage to form an ideal schedule that aligns with your organizational resources and their interests.

• Begin the project scheduling process with a meeting. Different inputs and perspectives from stakeholders and your team will add more value.
• Use advanced project management software to form the schedule in Gantt chart format and update it in real-time.
• Communicate and review any revisions made to the schedule to understand its implications of project costs and other constraints.
• Manage resources effectively to leverage their talent to the maximum while keeping their health index in check.
• Continuously review and update the project schedule. Project scheduling is a continuous process that demands meticulous monitoring.
• Learn from past experiences. Collaborate and communicate with stakeholders who have handled similar projects in the past to rectify the mistakes going forward.

Efficient equipment procurement is crucial for any project's success. Whether you are a construction company owner or a project manager, the process can be complex and overwhelming.

Whether you have a large procurement group or a small one, or even no procurement staff at all, we have the know-how and experience to support your project. Sunstone will collaborate with your purchasing department to ensure that the specified materials, equipment, and systems are purchased efficiently and delivered at the right time to minimize your project cost and to facilitate an on-time project completion.

Owner Direct Purchase can be a beneficial strategy in construction projects, providing cost savings, quality control, and increased flexibility in material and equipment procurement. However, successful implementation requires careful planning, effective communication, and the right expertise and resources. By understanding the advantages and considerations of Owner Direct Purchase, project owners can make informed decisions that contribute to the overall success of their projects.

The process includes preparation and processing of a demand as well as the end receipt and approval of payment. It often involves:

1. purchase planning
2. standards determination
3. specifications development
4. supplier research and selection
5. value analysis
6. financing
7. price negotiation
8. making the purchase

Procurement

The procurement phase is where the results of the detailed engineering effort are leveraged to acquire bids for equipment, materials, and construction services, technically and commercially evaluate those bids, and issue purchase order and negotiate construction contracts. Sunstone would support your project at all stages of the procurement process depending on the needs of your project.

We would perform the following steps during the procurement phase of the project:

• Identify and pre-qualify suppliers and construction contractors
• Solicit bids from suppliers and contractors
• Conduct technical and commercial bid analysis
• Recommend or select vendors and contractors
• Issue purchase orders/execute contracts
• Manage invoicing, pay application, contract changes, etc.
• Manage and expedite delivery of equipment, instruments, materials, etc.

An independent and structured review of construction bid documents by construction professionals to make certain that the work requirements are clear, the documents are coordinated and that they assist the contractor in bidding, construction and project administration to result in reduced impacts to the project.

Constructability reviews ultimately aim to save ownership time and money by uncovering problems or potential errors, omissions, ambiguities or conflicts that may be encountered during bidding or construction. Prior to build, after a constructability review takes place, there may be higher quality bids, and limited addenda, clarifications and bid date slippage. During project execution, constructability reviews can help reduce conflicts and ambiguities, which in turn decreases problems on the jobsite and helps keep projects on time and on budget.

These reviews are extremely important in that they help avoid unforeseen costs and schedule delays. A CR also will help the owner develop a phasing schedule - especially when working at a facility that is open and operating during construction like most plants and facilities.

No matter the size, all projects benefit from a properly conducted CR. Not only do they reduce the need or scope of change orders, claims, and schedule delays, but they also go a long way in preserving a better relationship between all parties on the project.