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Plan · Utah County
You have bids on your desk, or a builder already on site, and nobody in the room works for you. Danny Bird has been building since 2001. As your owner's rep he does not bid your job. He reads it for you.
What you are actually hiring
On most jobs the owner is the only person in the room who has never built anything. The architect answers to the design. The contractor answers to his own margin and schedule. Both of them may be perfectly honest and you can still lose a lot of money simply because you could not read what you were signing.
An owner's representative closes that gap. You bring the plans, the bids, the contract, the payment schedule, or the change order that showed up last week. Danny tells you what it says, what it leaves out, and what he would do if it were his money.
He is not there to replace your builder. He is there so that you are not the least informed person on your own project.
The independence rule
This is not a soft policy or a preference. It is the entire reason the advice is worth anything. A builder who might win your job cannot objectively review a competitor's bid, and you should not have to wonder which hat he is wearing while he reads it.
When Blackbird is hired as your owner's rep, Blackbird is out of the running to build the project. No proposal at the end, no quiet pitch in the middle, no reason to make the other bids look worse than they are.
Other contractors' bids, their unit pricing, your contract, your loan documents, your plans. None of it is shared, forwarded, or used against anyone. It is your information and it stays yours.
Including the answer nobody enjoys giving: sometimes the high bid is the honest one, sometimes your builder is right and you are wrong, and sometimes the fix is a conversation rather than a fight.
Scope
Engagements get scoped to what you need. Some owners want one afternoon on a stack of bids. Others want someone walking the job every two weeks until the punch list is closed.
Drawings that are vague get priced defensively, and every bidder guesses differently. Tightening the documents before they go out is the cheapest money you will ever spend, because it makes the bids comparable and removes the excuses later.
Three bids are rarely three prices for the same job. One carries the excavation, another assumes you handle it. One includes appliances, another does not. We line them up scope by scope and show you what the gap actually is.
A low bid is often a low allowance. Tile at a number nobody can buy tile for, a lighting budget half of what your plan needs, and a page of exclusions in small type. Those become change orders. We price them before you sign, not after.
Who carries the risk, what triggers each payment, how retainage works, what happens on a delay, and what the change order language actually permits. We read it in plain English and flag what deserves a conversation. Legal advice comes from your attorney.
The single fastest way to lose money on a build is paying ahead of the work. Each draw request gets checked against what is actually standing on the site, so you are never funding a stage that has not happened yet.
Is this change legitimately new work, or something that should have been in the original scope? Is the price fair for what it is? And a set of experienced eyes on the job while it is being built, when problems are still cheap to fix.
Where you are right now
A spread of several hundred thousand dollars on the same house is normal and it almost never means one builder is cheating. It usually means they scoped it differently. The useful question is what the low bid left out.
Draws are running ahead of progress, the schedule keeps slipping, or the answers you get have stopped making sense. Mid-construction is not too late. It is when an owner's rep saves the most.
Some change orders are legitimate, and some are recovering a number the contractor bid too thin. Knowing which one you are holding changes the entire conversation you are about to have.
The cheapest hour on any project is the one spent before the contract is signed. Scope, allowances, payment schedule, and schedule expectations, reviewed while everything is still negotiable.
How it works
A short conversation about the project, the stage you are in, and what is worrying you. If this is not the kind of help you need, we will say so.
Plans, bids, the contract, the payment schedule, recent photos. Whatever exists. It stays confidential, and it is only read by us.
What the documents say, where the real risk sits, what is missing, and the specific questions to put to your builder. Written so you can hand it straight to them.
Optional and scoped to the job: draw reviews, change order evaluation, and site walks at the stages that matter, until closeout.
Questions
Related
An independent line-item budget for what you are planning, so you know the real number before anyone bids it.
Feasibility, scope, and planning at the stage where changes are still free.
If you would rather not manage three parties at all, design and construction under one contract with one party accountable.
Build-outs, renovations, and expansions for owners and tenants across Utah County.
Where we work
Bids, a contract, a change order, or just a bad feeling about how the job is going. The first conversation is with Danny, and it stays between us.
Or call or text (801) 735-7186