01The proposals
Reading thisOne box per consultant, two to four. Type or paste each proposal's fee schedule as rows of item, fee, optionally followed by hours, rate. Paste straight from Excel works. A fee can also be written the way fee letters write it: excluded, included, at cost or TBC. A proposal with one line and no breakdown is read as a lump sum. The wording does not have to match across proposals.
02The comparison
Reading thisEvery service any consultant priced, lined up by stage. Each cell says what that consultant did with it: a fee, included elsewhere in their fee, excluded, no fixed fee, or not addressed at all. The two totals underneath are the point: as submitted, and levelled so each covers the same scope.
03The levelling schedule
Reading thisEach adjustment made to get from submitted to levelled. A gap is valued at the median of the fees the other consultants put on the same service, and it says so: that is a peer's price, not an independent estimate, and it is untested until the consultant answers the query.
04A query schedule for each consultant
Reading thisWhat to ask each consultant before you compare them again. Each schedule is built from that consultant's own figures only: no other consultant's fee, hours, rate or name can appear in it, and that is checked on the finished schedule before it is drawn, not trusted.
05Lowest levelled fee, and why that is not a recommendation
Reading thisConsultants are normally appointed on quality first: team, approach, programme and relevant work, then fee. This page has the fee half only, so it ranks the levelled fees and stops there.
06Where this stops
Stated up front, not discovered later
- No PDF reading for fee letters. A fee proposal is a letter, not a table, so the fee schedule is typed or pasted in. What you enter is exactly what is compared.
- Pairing is by stage name, then by wording. Concept, schematic, design development, construction documents, tender, construction stage, close-out, approvals and expenses are recognised under their usual names. Anything else pairs on shared words, and a service that pairs with nothing gets its own row.
- A lump sum cannot be split. It is compared at its total, and its consultant is asked for a breakdown. It is not marked down for stages it did not list.
- Gaps are valued from the other consultants. With two proposals that is one consultant's fee; with three or more it is a median. It is never an independent estimate.
- No saving, no paper. Nothing is stored and nothing downloads. The schedules stay on this screen.