Audit – Assert – Achieve.™
The Audit-Assert-Achieve™ method was developed because the escalation of claims to arbitration has become a plague for the construction industry. When claims slip into legal battles, projects typically die. The purpose of the Audit-Assert-Achieve™ method is to turn conflicts into viable solutions for the project.
Audit
Assess events that occurred on the site to understand the underlying conflict.
Evaluate subsequent entitlements.
Provided at site, through continuous remote support, or on demand upon an event or a claim.
Assert
Generate claim strategy.
Draft narrative.
Formulate claim document and annexes.
Achieve
Prepare the negotiation: balance of bargaining power, stakes, objectives and tactics, following the PACIFICAT© method developed by Combalbert and Mery.
Align the client’s side on one objective and one mandate.
On the client’s instruction, and alongside its counsel, talk directly with the other party.
Build terms that each side can defend within its own organisation, so that the project returns to execution.
Three forms of support
Audit in practice.
Our involvement usually begins with the Audit step, which takes one of three forms depending on what the project needs. Each form rests on the same discipline: establish the facts from the project record before anyone takes a position.
At site
Full presence
One of our people joins the project team at site, for the period the project requires, to follow the exchanges between the parties, the events as they occur and the entitlements that may follow from them.
See how →
At site and remotely
Keeping conflicts at the working level.
Most conflicts on a large project begin as technical questions about scope, sequence, design or interfaces. While they stay technical, the people who know the work can solve them.
Our people keep technical and scope conflicts resolvable at the working level, at site or remotely, and step in before they turn into notice driven procedure or personal accusation.
Trust cannot be written into a contract. A well run contract leaves room for it.
How we run the contract
Five working rules, set up at the start of the contract and kept for its whole life.
Raise it early, without penalty
Anyone can flag an issue at working level as soon as it appears, without it being read as a notice, a claim or an admission.
Every time bar opens a technical review
Each notice deadline in the contract also triggers a working level review of the issue behind it, so notices go out on time without becoming the first word.
A standing forum
A regular joint meeting where open technical and scope issues are worked through before positions harden.
A record kept apart from claims
A factual project record, kept separate from any claim position, that both parties can rely on. If a conflict does escalate, the record is what everything else rests on.
The task before the entitlement
First agree what needs to be done on site. Then settle who carries the cost and the time.
Ways to work with us
Full presence at site
One of our people joins the project team at site, for the period the project requires, under our method and the supervision of the founders.
Continuous remote support
A standing arrangement under which the project team refers exchanges, events and draft notices to us as they arise, with regular reviews of the position. It can also take the form of targeted assignments, such as a review of notice and change procedures or a health check of the project record.
Support on demand
Turning claims into solutions.
A claim shows that something went wrong on the project. It is a symptom, not the problem itself. Treated as a legal battle, it freezes communication and the Project Manager loses control of the outcome.
We turn claims into negotiated solutions, built on what actually happened on site and set at a level both parties can accept.
Our approach
Site oriented
Driven by project solutions
Commercially realistic
Typical engagements
Responding to a claim
Auditing a claim received and building a commercially realistic response.
Asserting a claim
Building the strategy, narrative and quantum of a claim to be raised.
Negotiation support
Preparing and supporting the negotiation that settles the claim.
Claim health check
A short Audit of an open claim: the exposure, the entitlements and the options.
Claim types we handle
Change and quantum
Extension of time
Concurrent delay
Prolongation costs
Disruption
Global claims