- Design-bid-build
- The traditional sequence: the owner hires a designer, completes documents, then competitively bids construction. Lowest-price selection and the clearest audit trail, but the contractor has no input during design and the owner keeps the gap between drawings and reality.
- Design-build
- One entity holds both design and construction under a single contract. Compresses schedule and gives the owner one point of responsibility for the gap between what was drawn and what can be built; in exchange the owner gives up some control over design detail.
- Progressive design-build
- Design-build awarded on qualifications first, with price developed collaboratively and converted to a GMP once design matures — usually with an off-ramp if the parties cannot agree. Popular with public and institutional owners who want design-build speed without a hard price on a concept drawing.
- CM at risk vs CM agency
- Under CM at risk the construction manager joins in preconstruction as an advisor, then assumes cost risk by converting to a GMP and holding the trade contracts. Under agency CM the manager stays a fee-based advisor, never holds trade contracts and never carries price risk — the owner does.
- Integrated project delivery (IPD)
- A multiparty contract binding owner, designer and builder to a shared risk-and-reward pool, with waivers of most claims between them. Rare, demanding, and used mostly by sophisticated repeat owners such as large health systems.
- Guaranteed maximum price (GMP)
- A contract ceiling: the contractor is reimbursed actual cost plus fee, but not above the GMP. Everything about it turns on the qualifications and assumptions attached — a GMP set on 60% documents is a forecast, not a guarantee.
- Cost-plus fee contract
- The owner reimburses documented cost of the work and pays a fee that may be a fixed amount or a percentage. Transparent and flexible, but without a GMP the owner carries the overrun, which is why the two are almost always paired.
- Lump sum (stipulated sum)
- One fixed price for a defined scope. Simple to administer and easy to compare across bidders, but it prices unknowns as contingency inside the contractor's number, invisible to the owner, and it makes every scope change a negotiation.
- Unit price and allowances
- Unit pricing sets a rate per measured quantity (cubic yard of rock excavation, linear foot of pipe) for work whose extent is not yet known. An allowance is a placeholder dollar amount carried for a scope not yet selected, reconciled up or down when the real cost is known.
- Contingency — owner's vs contractor's
- Two different pots. Contractor's contingency covers cost within the agreed scope: buyout shortfalls, coordination misses, minor unknowns. Owner's contingency covers the owner's own changes and scope additions. Confusing them is one of the most common sources of GMP disputes.
- Buyout and the savings split
- Buyout is the period after contract award when the contractor actually awards trade subcontracts and the estimate becomes real numbers. Savings realized against the GMP are shared under a negotiated split — often shown as an owner/contractor percentage — which is a major reason owners scrutinize buyout logs.
- Schedule of values
- The breakdown of the contract sum into line items used to measure progress and support monthly billing. A schedule of values that is front-loaded — heavy dollars on early activities — is a classic cash-flow tactic owners' representatives look for.
- AIA G702/G703 pay application
- The standard American Institute of Architects application and certificate for payment (G702) with its continuation sheet (G703) listing each schedule-of-values line, work completed, stored materials and retainage. The monthly financial heartbeat of a commercial job.
- Retainage and Texas retainage rules
- A percentage withheld from each payment until completion, as security for finishing and correcting work. Texas Property Code Chapter 53 imposes statutory retainage obligations on owners for the benefit of unpaid claimants and separately governs contractual retainage between the parties, with its own notice and release timing.
- Lien waiver — conditional, unconditional, progress, final
- A signed release of lien rights. Conditional takes effect only when payment actually clears; unconditional takes effect on signature regardless. Progress waivers cover a period, final waivers cover everything. Texas prescribes statutory forms, and signing an unconditional waiver before funds clear is one of the fastest ways a subcontractor loses its security.
- Texas Property Code Chapter 53 lien deadlines
- The Texas mechanic's and materialman's lien statute. Notice and affidavit deadlines are counted from the month in which labor or materials were furnished, and the 2021 overhaul consolidated the old two-notice scheme and revised the timing. Missing a deadline extinguishes the lien no matter how good the underlying claim is — always confirm current deadlines against the statute.
- Fund-trapping notice
- The Texas notice that, once properly sent, obligates the owner to withhold ('trap') funds otherwise payable to the general contractor to cover the claimant's amount. It is what gives a lower-tier subcontractor or supplier real leverage against an owner it has no contract with.
- Prompt payment act
- Statutes setting deadlines for owners to pay contractors and for contractors to pay subcontractors after a proper invoice, with interest for late payment and, in some cases, a right to suspend work. Texas has separate prompt-pay regimes for private and public work.
- Pay-when-paid vs pay-if-paid
- Pay-when-paid is a timing clause: the sub gets paid within a reasonable time after the GC is paid. Pay-if-paid is a risk-shifting condition precedent: no owner payment, no sub payment ever. Courts require unmistakable language for the latter, and it is the single most consequential clause in most subcontracts.
- Bid, performance and payment bonds
- Three distinct instruments. A bid bond guarantees the bidder will enter the contract if awarded. A performance bond guarantees completion. A payment bond guarantees subcontractors and suppliers get paid — and on Texas public work it is the substitute for lien rights, since public property cannot be liened.
- Surety and bonding capacity
- A surety is not an insurer; it underwrites the contractor's character, capacity and capital and expects to be reimbursed for any loss. Bonding capacity — the single-project and aggregate program a surety will write — is a hard ceiling on the work a contractor may pursue, and it moves with working capital, WIP quality and net worth.
- Prequalification and the prequalification questionnaire
- The owner's or GC's vetting of who is allowed to bid: audited financials, bonding letter, EMR and OSHA history, safety program, key personnel, current backlog and available capacity, litigation history, references. It is where most of the real competitive filtering happens, long before price.
- CCIP / OCIP wrap-up insurance
- A single consolidated liability and workers' compensation program covering all enrolled parties on a project. Contractor-controlled (CCIP) or owner-controlled (OCIP). Bidders must strip their own insurance cost out of the bid, and enrolled subs bill differently — a frequent source of leveling errors.
- Builder's risk and subguard
- Builder's risk covers physical loss or damage to the work in progress, stored materials and often soft costs and delay. Subguard (subcontractor default insurance) is the contractor-purchased alternative to requiring subcontractor bonds — faster to trigger, but the contractor carries a deductible and controls the default process.
- EMR, OSHA recordables and TRIR
- The experience modification rate multiplies a contractor's workers' compensation premium based on its loss history; an EMR above 1.0 is worse than average and above roughly 1.0 will disqualify a bidder on many industrial and institutional projects. TRIR is total recordable incident rate per 200,000 hours worked, computed from the OSHA 300 log. Both are commercial qualifications as much as safety metrics.
- RFI (request for information)
- A formal question from contractor to design team about an ambiguity, conflict or omission in the documents. RFI volume and turnaround time are leading indicators of both document quality and impending delay claims, which is why owners track them.
- Submittals and shop drawings
- Submittals are the contractor's proof that what will be installed matches what was specified — product data, samples, mockups. Shop drawings are fabrication-level drawings prepared by the trade or fabricator. Review turnaround on long-lead submittals sits directly on the critical path.
- Change order and construction change directive
- A change order is a signed, bilateral amendment to scope, price and time. A construction change directive is the owner's unilateral instruction to proceed before price and time are agreed, with cost determined later — the mechanism that keeps work moving when negotiation would otherwise stop the job.
- Critical path and float ownership
- The critical path is the longest chain of dependent activities; a day lost on it is a day lost on the project. Float is the slack on non-critical paths, and who owns it — owner, contractor or the project jointly — is a contract term. Where the contract is silent, float ownership becomes the central fight in nearly every delay claim.
- Delay analysis and claims
- The forensic comparison of as-planned to as-built schedules — time impact analysis, windows analysis, collapsed as-built — used to separate excusable from non-excusable and compensable from non-compensable delay, and to untangle concurrent delay. A claim is the formal demand for time, money or both when the parties cannot agree.
- Liquidated damages
- A per-day amount stipulated in advance as the owner's damages for late completion, enforceable only if it was a reasonable pre-estimate of harm rather than a penalty. Their presence changes how a contractor prices schedule risk and how hard it fights for time extensions.
- Substantial completion
- The point at which the owner can occupy and use the work for its intended purpose. It stops liquidated damages, starts most warranty periods, shifts risk of loss and triggers release of most retainage — which is why the date is negotiated as hard as the price.
- Punch list
- The itemized list of incomplete or non-conforming work remaining at substantial completion. Small in dollars, disproportionate in effect: it governs final payment, retainage release and the owner's last impression of the builder.
- Closeout, O&M manuals and warranty period
- Record drawings, operation and maintenance manuals, warranties, attic stock, training, certificates of occupancy and final lien waivers. The standard construction warranty period runs one year from substantial completion, with longer manufacturer warranties on roofing and equipment; a slow closeout is the most common reason final payment sits unpaid.
- LEED certification
- The USGBC rating system awarding Certified, Silver, Gold or Platinum based on points across energy, water, materials, indoor environmental quality and site. For the builder it means documented construction-waste diversion, indoor air-quality management during construction, and material and product data collected as the work proceeds — not at the end.
- Commissioning (Cx)
- Independent verification that mechanical, electrical, plumbing, controls and life-safety systems actually perform as designed — functional testing, trend review and issue logs. Fundamental commissioning is required by most energy codes and rating systems; enhanced commissioning, and retro-commissioning on existing buildings, go further.
- Value engineering
- Structured review to reduce cost while preserving required function — substituting systems, simplifying details, revisiting sequencing. Done in preconstruction it is genuine optimization; done after a bad bid opening it is usually just scope removal wearing a better name.
- Constructability review
- The builder reading the drawings and specifications as a builder before they are issued — hunting coordination conflicts, missing details, unbuildable sequences, unavailable products and unrealistic tolerances. The cheapest hour anyone spends on a project.
- Preconstruction services
- Everything the contractor does before the contract to build: conceptual and progressive estimating, scheduling, phasing and logistics planning, constructability and systems studies, market and subcontractor outreach, permitting strategy, procurement planning. Usually a separate fee, and the stage where most owner relationships are actually won.
- Estimate classes
- The convention that an estimate's accuracy range depends on design maturity — from a rough order-of-magnitude on a concept, through schematic and design-development estimates, to a hard bid on complete documents. AACE International's Class 5 through Class 1 framework is the common vocabulary; presenting a range instead of a single number is the mark of an honest estimator.
- Escalation clause
- A contract provision allocating the risk of price increases in named materials or in labor between the signing date and the purchase date, usually with an index, a threshold and a cap. It moved from unusual to routine after the material-price shocks of the early 2020s.
- Long-lead procurement
- Early release of purchase orders for equipment whose manufacturing lead time exceeds the time available in the normal sequence — switchgear, transformers, generators, chillers, air handlers, elevators, curtain wall. Often bought under an early-release agreement or owner-direct purchase before the main GMP is set.
- Prefabrication and modular construction
- Moving work off the jobsite — multi-trade MEP racks, bathroom pods, exterior wall panels, headwalls, skids — or building volumetric modules in a plant and setting them on site. Buys schedule, quality and safety, but demands earlier design freeze, tighter tolerances, heavier logistics and different payment and financing terms for off-site stored material.
- Self-perform work and trade partners
- Self-perform means the general contractor's own craft workforce executes scopes such as concrete, carpentry, drywall or finishes rather than subcontracting them — buying schedule control and margin, and a bench that can rescue a failing trade. 'Trade partner' is the deliberate reframing of 'subcontractor' toward a long-term relationship, which matters commercially when capacity is scarce and good subs choose their generals.
- Labor productivity and crew rate
- Estimating and controlling work in labor hours per unit installed, priced at a fully burdened crew rate covering wages, taxes, insurance, small tools and supervision. Productivity loss from overtime, stacking of trades, out-of-sequence work and acceleration is the substance of most inefficiency claims.
- General conditions, general requirements and jobsite overhead
- General conditions are the contractual terms governing the parties. General requirements are Division 01 specification sections. Jobsite overhead — supervision, trailers, temporary power, cranes, hoists, safety, cleanup, dumpsters — is the time-dependent cost of running the site, and because it accrues per day it is the core of nearly every delay damages calculation.
- Fee percentage
- The contractor's overhead and profit, expressed as a percentage of cost of work under a cost-plus or GMP contract. Fee compresses on competitive commodity work and expands on complex, fast or risky projects; how change-order fee is calculated is negotiated separately and matters more than the headline rate.
- WIP schedule and over/under billing
- The work-in-progress schedule reconciles, job by job, contract value, costs to date, estimated cost to complete, percent complete and revenue recognized. Billing ahead of cost incurred is overbilling — a cash-flow benefit and a borrowed liability; billing behind is underbilling and usually a warning sign. Sureties and bankers read the WIP before anything else in the financial statements.