The Board Wants a Construction Audit. Where Do You Start?

“We would like you to look at the construction project.”

A perfectly reasonable request. Until you realize the project has six contracts, twelve consultants, a mountain of change orders, and a vocabulary that seems to require its own passport.

Take a breath. Before requesting every document produced since groundbreaking, clarify what the board needs to know.

Are they concerned about rising costs? Delays? Payments? Procurement? Whether the finished building will do what the organization needs?

Those concerns should shape the assignment.

Start with a short scoping conversation and capture four things:

• The concern: What prompted the request?

• The decision: What will the board or management do with the audit results?

• The boundaries: Which project stage, contracts, risks, and time period will you examine?

• The expertise: Which questions can your team answer, and which require specialist support?

Then build a basic picture of the project. Review the approved business case, budget, current forecast, schedule, key contracts, governance arrangements, and major changes.

Follow one transaction or decision from beginning to end. A change order can be particularly revealing. Who requested it? Who assessed the cost? Who approved it? Where did it enter the forecast? Was the work verified before payment?

That walkthrough can expose gaps that a beautifully organized document folder will never announce.

You can bring valuable audit skills to a construction assignment while recognizing where engineering, scheduling, legal, or other technical expertise is needed. The important step is making those boundaries explicit.

Try this today: Complete this sentence: “This audit will help the board decide whether ______ by examining ______.”

If the blanks are difficult, the scope needs another conversation.

LG3’s Construction Audit Master Class can help you build the knowledge to approach these assignments with greater confidence.

If this request landed tomorrow, what would you want help with first: contracts, costs, schedules, or scoping?

Learn it. Grow it. Own it.