Where the Contingency Lives

If the contingency is distributed into the trade line items rather than shown as a separate line, you cannot see it, cannot track it, and cannot tell whether savings belong to you. A GMP built that way looks competitive at award and behaves quite differently through the job.

The savings split is the clause most often left until later and it is the one most likely to cause difficulty at the end. Agreeing it at award takes five minutes when nobody knows who will benefit; agreeing it at closeout takes considerably longer when both parties can see the number.

Access to the actual subcontracts and the actual invoices, not a summary prepared for the owner. The distinction matters because a summary is a representation and the underlying documents are evidence.

Establish before award what you get to see, how often, and whether you can appoint somebody to review it. A contractor comfortable with genuine open book will answer that easily, and the answer tells you what the term means in this contract.

1. 01Present the GMP with the contingency as its own visible line.
2. 02Open the books — subcontracts and invoices, not just totals.
3. 03Agree the savings split in writing before award.
4. 04Report contingency drawdown monthly with reasons.

Agree the savings split before award, not after. It is a five-minute conversation at the start and a genuinely bad one at closeout, when both parties have a view about who created the saving.

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