Protecting Your Investment During Construction
Owner’s representation that drives accountability, quality, and cost control.
Urban One acts as a trusted intermediary between ownership and the construction team, ensuring every dollar spent aligns with your investment goals. Our oversight integrates technical expertise with financial discipline to deliver projects on time, on budget, and to specification.
Our Process
Bidding & Trade Buyout
Competitive procurement and contract negotiation.
Budget & Cash-Flow Control
Master cost reporting and draw management.
Schedule Management
Critical-path tracking with milestone transparency.
Change-Order & Pay-App Review
Reduce overruns through rigorous evaluation.
Field Quality & Safety Audits
Daily supervision and detailed punchlist management.
Public Agency Coordination
Seamless permitting and inspection navigation.
Value Engineering
Optimize design and materials for cost and performance.
Why It Works
We’ve sat in every seat – owner, developer, and builder – which means we speak the language of all three.
Our job is to protect your capital and maintain project integrity from groundbreaking to closeout.
Want true owner-level visibility on your construction project?
Services Offered:
- Bidding & Trade Buyout – buyout of all necessary contractor trade work. Whether the plan is to use a general contractor, several prime contractors, many direct subcontractors, or any combination thereof, formal RFP’s will be issued and sent to at least 3 different contractors for each trade to ensure sufficient coverage through competitive bidding. All bids will be thoroughly scoped and vetted and a comprehensive bid comparison will be presented to the client prior to awarding any contract.
- Cash Flow Analysis – as part of the Master Cost Report, a complete Cash Flow Analysis can be created to project costs on a month-to-month basis so that the client has a clear and realistic schedule for anticipated expenditures and bank draws.
- Change Order Review – we make sure that each contract carries a complete scope of work to reduce the amount of change order requests, however, when they do arise, a thorough review and negotiation will take place to determine the validity of the request prior to approval. Our staff includes members with estimating experience at general contracting firms.
- Construction Budget – prepare a budget of all applicable hard costs, including allowances for any anticipated cost exposures. This construction budget is also integrated into Master Cost Report along with all other related development costs, including acquisition, design & engineering, legal, permits & fees, FF&E & OS&E, administrative, sales, and marketing costs.
- Consultant Management – oversee the architect, engineers, and all other specialty consultants throughout the design and construction process. Not only will we be heavily involved in the design development phase, but we will coordinate all consultant activities throughout the construction of the project.
- Contract Negotiation – after an “apples-to-apples” bid comparison has been compiled for a particular trade, negotiations will commence to establish a complete scope of work that is cost effective. Our extensive experience in writing contracts safeguards the client and reducing their liability.
- Design Development – transitional phase where the architect, engineers, and specialty consultants work toward bringing the design from the schematic phase into the construction document phase. We facilitate the process and work with the consultants to crystallize the design concept and peer review the construction documents to certify that the design can be built in the field.
- Document Control – maintain a working history set of all project documents in the field, including drawings, specifications, requests for information (RFI’s), submittals, sketches (SK’s), and all relevant tracking logs. Every RFI response is posted onto the drawings to ensure not only proper quality control in the field, but also a complete set of as-built drawings that can be turned over to the client at the end of the job.
- Field Quality Control – staffing typically includes a superintendent that is walking the job everyday, from start to finish. This supervision is key to having a successful project that is built per plan and spec. It is also imperative to have a superintendent to manage the field labor so that manpower stays at a consistent and productive level.
- Inspections & Certifications – work with contractors as they prepare and go through the many inspections required by the authorities having jurisdiction during the construction process to achieve final building certifications.
- Job Cost Accounting – prepare and maintain a Master Cost Report, which includes hard costs along with all other related development costs, including acquisition, design & engineering, permits & fees, legal, FF&E & OS&E, administrative, sales, and marketing costs. Meetings are typically held with the client to review and update the cost report.
- LEED Analysis – The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System, developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), provides a suite of standards for the environmentally sustainable design, construction and operation of buildings and neighborhoods. With LEED AP’s on staff, we have the capability of analyzing a design and driving it to LEED certification if so desired.
- Lien Releases – request and gather all conditional and unconditional waiver and release of lien forms from all contractors, subcontractors, and sub-subcontractors for progress payments and final payments. If payments are made correctly, this will protect the client from having mechanic’s liens recorded on their property.
- Material & Equipment Procurement – buyout of all necessary materials and equipment to complete the job successfully. Many times, in order to save costs, materials and equipment will be bought directly through a purchase order to the client. For each group of materials/equipment, pricing will be obtained from at least 3 different vendors to ensure sufficient coverage through competition.
- Pay Application Review – review all general contractors, prime contractors, and/or subcontractors monthly applications for payment prior to recommending payment to client. We work with the contractors in preparing their schedule of values during contract negotiations to maintain a proper breakdown and format that is consistent and comprehensive for the client during billing.
- Public Agencies Management – coordinate with all public agencies having jurisdiction to make sure that all proper and legal avenues are taken when obtaining permits and approvals. We will work closely with city plan checkers during the design process and city inspectors during the construction process.
- Punchlist – in addition to providing ongoing quality control, the contractor’s work will be reviewed for compliance with the contract documents near the completion of construction. A punchlist document will be generated listing those items of work which have been observed as incomplete or requiring correction. The contractor then finishes the items on this list before Final Completion may be declared and final payments authorized.
- Schedule – prepare and maintain a Master Construction Schedule which incorporates all construction activities, procurement, material lead times, submittal lead times, approvals, permits, inspections, tenant relations, logistics, sales, marketing, and turnover to the end-user. Meetings are typically held with the general contractor and subcontractors to review 3-week or 6-week look-ahead schedules.
- Submittal, RFI, SK Review – review and provide insight on all submittals, RFI’s, and SK’s. We do not act as an intermediary to simply push paper. We act as an intermediary to filter the documents to make sure everything is warranted and properly clarified.
- Value Engineering – a technique in which the value of a system’s outputs is optimized by crafting a mix of performance and costs. In most cases this practice identifies and removes unnecessary expenditures, thereby reducing the value. We will work with the consultants and contractors to remove these unnecessary costs and put the money in places where it should be spent.
- Warranty & O&M Manuals – near the end of the project, we will gather and compile books of all applicable product manufacturer and workmanship warranties, along with all applicable operations & maintenance (O&M) manuals for the end-user. In residential construction, these can be put together to be turned over to the individual homeowner, the homeowner’s association, and/or the property management firm.