Digital Cost Assurance

Assure every cost,
not just a sample

DCA checks 100% of project costs against the contract they were defined under — catching errors before they ever reach certification.

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Validation accuracy

Average cost saving

Cost transparency

Digital Cost Assurance (DCA) is the automated, continuous verification of project costs against the commercial terms of the contract they were procured under. Instead of auditing a small sample of costs after payment, DCA checks 100% of cost lines before they are certified, so errors, duplicates and ineligible charges are caught while they can still be corrected.

Why traditional cost assurance falls short

On large construction and infrastructure programmes, thousands of cost lines flow through applications for payment every month: labour, plant, materials, subcontractors and preliminaries. Traditional assurance handles this volume by sampling. A commercial team or external auditor reviews a fraction of the costs, usually retrospectively, and extrapolates from what they find.

The result is a control with three built-in weaknesses. Most costs are never checked at all. The checks that do happen come months after the money has left, when recovery means a claw-back negotiation. And the work itself is slow, manual and spreadsheet-bound, which means skilled commercial people spend their time verifying lines instead of exercising judgement.

On cost-reimbursable and target-cost contracts, where the client pays actual cost, every unchecked line is an unpriced risk. That is the gap digital cost assurance closes.

How does Digital Cost Assurance work?

DCA runs as a continuous pipeline with five connected stages, taking a cost from submission to assured payment:

Cost Ingestion

Cost data flows in from applications for payment, cost ledgers and site records, in whatever format it arrives.

Validation Engine

Every line is checked against the commercial terms of the contract it was procured under: rates, uplifts, eligibility and evidence.

Anomaly Detection

Patterns that rules alone would miss, such as duplicates, unusual quantities and out-of-sequence charges, are flagged for review.

Cost Transparency

Findings are presented with the evidence behind them, so commercial teams resolve exceptions rather than hunt for them.

Payment Acceleration

Clean costs move to certification faster, because the checking has already happened.

You can watch each of these stages run live in the assurance engine further down this page.

What does DCA check?

Every category of cost that appears in an application for payment is verified against the contract:

Labour

Rates, hours, roles and uplifts against the agreed schedules.

Plant and equipment

Hire rates, idle time, duplicated charges and on/off-hire dates.

Materials

Quantities, pricing and delivery evidence against orders.

Subcontract costs

Back-to-back terms, retentions and payment application accuracy.

Preliminaries

Time-related charges and staff schedules against the contract.

Compliance

Eligibility of each cost under the contract, with an audit trail.

Digital Cost Assurance vs traditional audit

	Traditional cost audit	Digital Cost Assurance
Coverage	A sample, often 5 to 10% of costs	100% of cost lines, every application
Timing	Retrospective, often months after payment	Before certification and payment
Effort	Manual spreadsheet checking	Automated, with people focused on exceptions
Evidence	Assembled by hand when challenged	Captured automatically for every finding
Recovery	Claw-back negotiations after the fact	Errors corrected before money leaves

Who uses Digital Cost Assurance?

DCA was built for construction and infrastructure, where cost-reimbursable and target-cost contracts (such as NEC options C, D and E) make demonstrating actual cost a contractual obligation. Client organisations use it to gain confidence in what they are being charged; contractors use it to evidence their costs and get paid faster.

Coria's DCA is proven at national-infrastructure scale, where it improved actual cost confidence on National Highways programmes, checking costs with 99% accuracy and finding savings of up to 20%. You can read more in our case studies or join one of our webinars on DCA.

The assurance engine

Watch DCA run

Run each stage of the assurance engine and watch it check costs against the contract in real time.

coria — assurance-engine —

DCA FAQs

Common questions

What is digital cost assurance in simple terms?

Digital cost assurance is software that automatically checks every cost charged to a project against the contract it was procured under, before the money is paid. Instead of auditing a small sample of costs months later, every line is verified continuously, and errors are caught while they can still be corrected.

How is digital cost assurance different from a traditional cost audit?

A traditional audit reviews a sample of costs retrospectively, so most lines are never checked and errors are found after payment. Digital cost assurance checks 100% of costs against the contract terms before certification, turning assurance from a periodic exercise into a continuous control.

What types of contract does DCA work with?

DCA is particularly effective on cost-reimbursable and target-cost contracts, such as NEC options C, D and E, where actual cost must be demonstrated. The rules engine is configured to the commercial terms of each contract, so it adapts to bespoke amendments and schedules.

Does digital cost assurance replace commercial teams or auditors?

No. It removes the manual checking that consumes their time, and gives them evidence-backed exceptions to resolve. Commercial teams spend their effort on judgement calls and negotiation rather than line-by-line verification, and auditors get a complete, documented trail to rely on.

What data does DCA need to get started?

Typically the contract commercial terms, applications for payment and supporting cost records, such as timesheets, plant hire records and invoices. Data arrives in the formats teams already use; the ingestion stage handles normalisation.

What results has digital cost assurance delivered?

Coria's DCA has been proven on National Highways infrastructure programmes, checking costs with 99% accuracy and delivering savings of up to 20% by catching errors and ineligible costs before they were paid.

See DCA on your own costs

Bring a live application for payment and we'll show you what continuous assurance finds — on your contracts, your data, in real time.