Digital Cost Assurance
Transforming cost assurance through digital innovation
Overview
Digital Cost Assurance (DCA) brings complete, consistent assurance to cost-reimbursable infrastructure contracts - checking every Defined Cost claimed, not just a sample, while keeping the people who matter firmly in control of every decision.
Challenge
On major NEC and other cost-reimbursable projects, the contractor is paid the actually cost of providing the works - so every monthly application for payment must be verified before it's certified. But a single application can run to tens of thousands of cost lines, taking days to assess. Comprehensive manual checking is impossible, so assurance relies on sampling: the majority of cost lines pass through unverified. The result miss or over spend that surfaces late, in audit or dispute; skilled cost assurers spending 95% of their time finding what's important and burning out on drudgery; cost data that can't be compared across a portfolio; and, under the new failure-to-prevent-fraud law, growing exposure for organisations that can't show their procedures are sound.
Solution
DCA provides augmented assurance - technology as the lynchpin to change that increases what skilled assurers can do, rather than replacing them. It reads every line of every application and tests for compliance against each specific contract, returning a clear recommendation - accept, refer for human judgement, or disallow - with the quality non-conformance cited for corrective action. A person reviews everything the system can't confidently assess, and the Project Manager always issues the Payment Certificate. The system analyses; people decide.
Results
- 100% coverage: every cost line assessed every month, in place of sampling
- Defensible decisions: each recommendation is based on quality non-conformance, not opinion, so decisions hold up years later
- Expertise restored: assurers spend their time on judgement, not spreadsheet reconciliation
- Comparable portfolios: consistent assurance makes cost data genuinely comparable across projects for the first time
Key Takeaways
Digital Cost Assurance replaces sampling with 100%, evidenced, contract-specific assurance, providing exceptional confidence in every payment, returning skilled professionals to the work that needs their judgement, and turning fragmented project data into a comparable, defensible portfolio view.