Our services team combines the resources and experience of top professionals in portfolio strategy, lease escalation and utility audits, construction oversight, and janitorial audit and advisory services to provide a comprehensive suite of real estate-focused savings opportunities. Our seamless integration of these capabilities allows us to provide holistic, end-to-end services that drive efficiencies and have resulted in over $2 billion in client cost savings. At each step in the process, our team works collaboratively to uncover overlooked savings opportunities and to provide our clients with the guidance necessary to monetize all available benefits. The following service areas are focused on:
Portfolio Strategy
Through a combination of benchmarking, analysis, and restructuring, we evaluate the composition of each real estate portfolio and support the successful implementation of services designed to optimize performance. Our sophisticated, proprietary methodology provides reliable, industry-specific data used for the critical analysis of clients' real estate assets in real time.
Lease Audit and Advisory
For most companies, real estate occupancy and facility costs are typically some of the largest recurring expenditures. Assessing the accuracy of these charges and identifying opportunities for savings is essential. IDRC professionals deliver deeper, more thorough audits, and are able to find more ways to obtain the greatest refund possible. Our process is designed to minimize conflicts and to maintain a positive relationship between landlords and tenants. Our service approach proactively ensures that our clients' needs are fully satisfied and accommodated.
Construction Audit & Advisory
Establishing a construction audit team at the beginning of a project will stem the seemingly unavoidable problems commonly associated with the construction process, saving time and money. Even if a project has already commenced, we can still customize our approach to meet our client's needs. In fact, most construction contracts require the vendor to make their books available for audit for up to three years after the project is complete.
IDRC professionals work to assess potential savings through a construction audit in the following areas:
The Lease– Our team will assist in negotiating and reviewing the lease and comparing it against construction costs to make sure items the landlord is responsible for are not inadvertently being paid by our client. A thorough knowledge of leases and construction costs is critical to having the project completed at the lease cost.
Professional Contracts– Our practices assess all professional service contracts including project management, design, and construction management for clarity and market value pricing. Forensic audits are performed throughout the project to verify time charges, billing rates and materials.
Design Drawings– With the innumerable decisions required of each project, it is not uncommon for critical information to be missing. Our rigorous review of design drawings identify errors and omissions and confirm clarity, completeness and coordination between the architecture, construction, and engineering professionals. This review is crucial to a project's success in reducing wasted time and unnecessary expense by anticipating and resolving problems before they happen.
Change Orders– The common perception is for construction managers and subcontractors to make up for profits lost during the bid phase with change orders. Being on site and entrenched, they now have negotiating leverage. BDO levels the field by stress testing every change order, which includes screening for cost, value, accuracy, and redundancy to the base contract. The validity and charge for a change order is confirmed in the field and documented before we recommend approvals. In many cases we are able to negotiate reduced costs to the change orders, and in turn, the project.
Landlord Charges for Services– During construction, the landlord will bill a tenant directly for a variety of expenses including utilities, freight elevator and janitorial services. These charges may be addressed as part of the tenant improvement clause of the lease, so it is important to make sure these expenses are not included in the operating expense escalation as well, and that the rate does not include any hidden premiums.
