A contract administration fee is useful only when you know which work it buys. Before comparing totals, put the proposals beside the same project brief, programme and responsibility schedule. This guide explains how to read the assumptions, ask about additional services and compare appointments through to completion. It does not offer a market price table or calculate a fee from the building budget. HCS's existing starting-fee information is on the service page; a written proposal must establish the scope for your own project.
Start with the appointment, not just the amount
RICS publishes standard and short forms of consultant's appointment, with separate service schedules. Its contract administration schedule allows services to be selected and additional services to be identified. That distinction matters when comparing proposals: a service appearing in a published schedule is not evidence that it has been included in a particular quotation.
Ask each prospective consultant to mark what is included, excluded and dependent on another appointment. Put any unresolved point in writing before accepting. A description such as overseeing the works is too broad for a useful comparison: ask what documents will be issued, what decisions will be made and what information you must provide. Keep the agreed scope with the accepted fee proposal.
Give every consultant the same project information
Prepare a short briefing pack containing the address, works description, drawings, specification, proposed contract and intended programme. State whether a contractor has been selected and whether work has started. Identify which documents are final and which are still being developed. This lets you ask the consultant to distinguish pricing assumptions from information that must be checked before the appointment is settled.
Describe access arrangements, continued occupation and who will make client decisions. Include known consent conditions and any lender or managing-agent requirements. If part of the brief is uncertain, label it openly and ask how the quote would be reviewed once it is resolved. Do not ask different consultants to price different stages and then treat the totals as equivalent.
Ask how the proposed fee basis operates
If a proposal uses a fixed amount, ask which programme, meetings, visits and deliverables that amount covers. If it uses time charges, ask how time will be recorded, reported and authorised. If it expresses a fee as a percentage, ask what cost figure it applies to and how changes to that figure affect the invoice. These are questions for evaluating a proposal, not a statement that HCS offers each arrangement.
Request a clear explanation of VAT, expenses, third-party charges and invoicing stages. Ask whether a cap, allowance or estimate is binding and what approval is needed to exceed it. Avoid adding your own assumed percentage to a construction budget: without the agreed services and charging rules, the result does not describe an appointment that anyone has offered.
Compare visits and decisions together
HCS's published CA scope describes periodic inspections rather than continuous site supervision. When reviewing any proposal, ask how visits will be planned around the work and how observations will inform contractual decisions. A visit count alone does not explain whether the appointment covers preparation, travel, reporting, follow-up or review of information sent between visits.
Identify work that will become concealed and ask how the team will arrange access before it is covered. Decide who will provide specialist inspection or testing where needed. If more frequent site observation is wanted, discuss a separate inspection brief and its reporting route. Compare the resulting division of responsibilities as well as the cost; an assumed daily presence should never be left hidden inside a general CA description.
Define the pre-contract boundary
Write down whether the quote starts before tender, after contractor selection or after the building contract is signed. Ask separately about specifications, tender enquiries, tender comparisons and preparing contract documents. If those tasks belong to another consultant, identify the handover information the administrator expects to receive. Do not assume that a construction-stage quotation includes rebuilding an incomplete tender package.
For an existing project, supply the current document register, instructions, payment history and outstanding issues. Ask what initial review is needed before the new consultant can accept responsibility for future decisions. Keep that review distinguishable from an opinion on earlier certificates or a dispute about previous work. Our procurement and tendering service explains the separate preparation stage.
Agree how a changing programme affects the appointment
Ask the proposal to explain what happens if the works start later, pause, run longer or change substantially. Request the assumptions behind any allowance for meetings, revisions and site attendance. Identify who can authorise additional professional services and how the consultant will notify you before carrying them out. Keep an agreed change to the appointment alongside the original scope and fee.
Distinguish a contractor's changed building-work price from a consultant's additional fee request. Ask for the reason, service, period and charging basis for each. Do not treat an instruction to the contractor as automatic agreement to a separate professional charge. A simple appointment-change register can show what was requested, who approved it, which fee terms apply and what remains undecided.
Include the work after the last main site visit
Check the proposal against your intended close-out record. Ask about the practical-completion assessment, outstanding-work schedule, defect follow-up, final information and final-account duties under the selected contract. Establish which tasks remain in scope after occupation. Our completion and defects guide helps you prepare that discussion without assuming every contract uses identical procedures.
Request a named endpoint for the consultancy service and ask how any remaining work will be handled. If another adviser owns the final valuation or specialist certification, put that allocation in the responsibility schedule. Compare quotations through the same endpoint, so that an apparently lower total is not simply a price for fewer stages. Retain the agreed documents for later invoice checks.
Turn the comparison into a clear instruction
Build a comparison sheet with one row per deliverable and columns for assumptions, exclusions, timing and price basis. Mark gaps for clarification rather than filling them with guesses. Ask for a revised written proposal once those points are resolved. The purpose is to choose a suitable, understandable appointment, not to convert different services into an artificial lowest-price league table.
See HCS contract administration for the published scope, current starting-fee wording and independence requirement. HCS cannot act as independent contract administrator where HCS is the contractor. Send the briefing pack and the decisions you need support with so that the proposed role, programme and fee can be considered together. Keep the contractor's works contract and the professional appointment identifiable as separate documents.