Commercial & residential construction management in Utah
Grandview manages trades, schedule, budget, and quality on your behalf — open-book, for a stated fee, from preconstruction through closeout. It’s the right structure for Utah County and Salt Lake County owners who want professional management on a complex project without carrying the risk of running it themselves.
Who hires a construction manager
Owners with projects too complex for a single lump-sum bid. A developer building multifamily in Lehi. A business owner phasing a commercial remodel around operations. A family building a custom home on a bench lot where the geotech report raises more questions than it answers. In each case the owner is capable, informed, and busy — and the project needs someone whose full-time job is procurement, sequencing, and cost control.
Some of our clients considered acting as their own general contractor to save the markup. It can work, and occasionally we tell people it’s the right call. More often the math runs the other way: an owner-builder carries every scheduling gap, every scope hole between trades, and every code correction personally, and one missed dependency can cost more than a management fee for the whole job. Construction management exists for owners who want that risk professionally carried without giving up visibility into where the money goes.
If you already have a builder under contract and want construction literacy on your side of the table instead, that’s a different service — owner’s representation — and we offer that too.
What’s the difference between CM-as-agent and CM-at-risk?
The difference is who carries construction risk. As your agent, we manage the project for a fee while you hold the trade contracts and pay actual costs — maximum transparency, but overruns land on you. At-risk, Grandview holds the trade contracts and commits to a guaranteed maximum price, so cost overruns beyond that number are our problem. We offer both.
Agency CM suits owners who want full control and full visibility: institutions, experienced developers, and anyone whose stakeholders require open procurement. You see every trade bid, every invoice, and every schedule update, and we administer the contracts in your name. Our fee is fixed or percentage-based and stated up front, so our incentive is a smooth project, not a padded one.
CM-at-risk behaves more like the general contracting you already know, with one important change in timing: we join before the drawings are finished, price the work open-book as design develops, and then convert to a guaranteed maximum price once scope is settled. If buyout comes in under the GMP, the savings are shared or returned per the contract — in writing, not by handshake.
When does construction management beat a general contract?
When design isn’t finished, the work is phased, or the budget has to shape decisions as they’re made. A lump-sum general contract prices a completed design once, at bid day; a construction manager joins months earlier and prices continuously, so cost problems surface while they’re still cheap to fix. For a well-defined, single-phase scope, general contracting is simpler — and we’ll say so.
Roughly 80% of a project’s cost is locked in by design decisions. If the first real price you see arrives after design is complete, your only remaining levers are cutting scope or paying for redesign. CM puts a builder in the room while those decisions are still open. That’s also the logic behind design-build, where design and construction share one contract; CM keeps your designer independent while adding the same early cost discipline.
Not ready to commit to any delivery model? A standalone preconstruction and estimating engagement gets you real numbers first, and it converts cleanly into CM if the project moves forward.
What’s included — and who does the work
A managed project with Grandview includes preconstruction budgeting, bid-package assembly, trade procurement and scope leveling, master scheduling, permit coordination, on-site supervision, submittal and RFI management, change-order control, open-book cost reporting, inspection scheduling, and closeout documentation — lien waivers, warranties, and as-builts included. You get one accountable point of contact for all of it.
Honesty about who swings the hammers matters most on a management page. Grandview builds under a Utah DOPL B100 general contractor license (#14282236-5501, verifiable at dopl.utah.gov). For specialty trades — electricians, plumbers, HVAC, fire suppression — Grandview holds the contract and manages licensed subcontractors; we coordinate, sequence, and quality-check their work within your project. Under an agency arrangement those contracts sit in your name instead, and we administer them for you. Either way, nobody on the job is guessing who’s responsible for what.
Quality control is contractual, not aspirational: every trade scope we write includes the inspection hold points, and along the Wasatch fault that means paying real attention to structural anchorage and welded-connection inspections rather than treating them as paperwork.
How we run a managed project
Problems happen. Surprises should not. The sequence below is how we keep the second kind off your project.
- Understand. Scope, site, constraints, and money. We recommend a delivery model — agency, at-risk, or a plain general contract — including the options that pay us less.
- Preconstruction. Budgets built from real quantities and trade quotes, constructability review, and value engineering while the design can still absorb it.
- Buyout. Bid packages go to qualified trades, bids get leveled scope-for-scope, and everything is specified to current Utah-adopted code — Utah adopted updated I-codes effective July 2026, and pricing to the old edition is a common source of change orders.
- Permits and schedule. Plan-review timelines vary widely along the Wasatch Front — fast-growth cities like Lehi, Saratoga Springs, and Eagle Mountain run heavy review volumes while Provo, Orem, and Salt Lake City are more predictable — so we build the real timeline into the schedule instead of discovering it later.
- Build. Site supervision, weekly owner reporting, and disciplined change control. Concrete and exterior work get sequenced around Utah’s 100-plus annual freeze-thaw days rather than around wishful thinking.
- Closeout. Punch list, final inspections, lien waivers, O&M documentation, and warranty terms — delivered, not promised.
What does construction management cost in Utah?
CM fees on mid-size Utah projects commonly run 5–10% of construction cost, plus general-conditions costs like supervision and temporary facilities. Treat that as a ballpark planning range, not a promise: the real number depends on project size, duration, and how much preconstruction the job needs. We state the fee in writing before you commit to anything.
What moves the fee up: long durations, phased work in occupied buildings, many small trade packages, and multiple permitting jurisdictions. What moves it down: repetitive scopes, a single site, and a decisive owner. CM-at-risk carries a contingency inside the GMP that agency CM doesn’t need, so at-risk pricing looks higher on paper while transferring risk you’d otherwise hold yourself.
Site conditions matter too. Much of the Wasatch Front sits on expansive clay or collapsible bench soils, and a project budgeted without a geotechnical contingency for footings and flatwork is a project budgeted optimistically. Part of the CM job is sizing that contingency honestly at the start — and reporting monthly on whether it’s being spent or returned.
Questions we actually get
Do you offer a guaranteed maximum price?
Yes, under CM-at-risk. Once design and scope are settled, we convert the open-book estimate into a GMP that caps your cost exposure. The GMP includes a stated contingency, and the contract spells out how unused contingency and buyout savings are shared or returned. Before scope is settled, anyone offering a “guaranteed” number is guessing.
What do I have to do as the owner?
Three things, mostly: make decisions on schedule, pay on schedule, and keep your design team responsive. We’ll give you a decision log with dates so nothing ambushes you, but material selections and design approvals sit with you, and a two-week delay in a decision can become a six-week delay in the field.
Can you take over a project that’s already underway?
Often, yes. We start with a paper audit — contracts, pay applications, permits, inspection records — and a site walk to establish what’s actually complete versus billed. Then you get a written read on budget-to-finish and schedule before we accept the assignment. Distressed takeovers are workable; undocumented ones take longer to stabilize.
How is this different from owner’s representation?
In construction management, we run the build: procurement, schedule, supervision, and cost control are our daily work. In owner’s representation, another builder runs the build and we advise you — reviewing their bids, schedules, and pay applications. If you already trust your builder and just want oversight, the rep model is cheaper and sufficient.
Is open-book pricing actually cheaper?
Not automatically — and be wary of anyone who claims otherwise. What open-book pricing guarantees is that you see actual trade costs and our fee separately, so competitive buyout savings flow to you instead of disappearing into a lump sum. On complex or evolving scopes, that transparency usually beats the risk premium hidden in fixed bids.
Where managed projects usually go
Construction management is one of four ways to structure an engagement with our planning and project management group. The projects that benefit most are the bigger builds — multifamily construction, ground-up commercial, and phased tenant improvements in occupied buildings — where sequencing decisions compound and an unmanaged week is never free.
Tell us what you’re working on
We reply within a couple of hours during business hours — a day at most. You’ll get a straight read on scope, sequence, and budget before anyone commits to anything.