SOV Front-Loading Check

A free front-loading screen for a schedule of values

Front-loading means weighting the early lines so cash arrives before the work does. Everyone knows it happens, which is why an experienced reviewer reads a new schedule of values looking for it. This does the first pass in about a minute.

What it actually checks

Four categories that carry money early, matched on words in your line descriptions, each against a rule-of-thumb share of the contract:

• Mobilisation — real costs, but easy to inflate because they are billed before anything is visible.
• Bonds and insurance — usually a known premium, so a large number here is checkable against an actual invoice.
• General conditions — legitimate and large, which is exactly why it absorbs padding.
• Demolition and site prep — front-heavy by nature, and sometimes more so than the work warrants.

It also flags any single line carrying more than a quarter of the contract, regardless of category — not because that is wrong, but because a line that big is hard to assess a percentage against every month, and it is the one that causes arguments.

What this is not

It is a screen, not proof. A flagged line may be entirely justified — a job with a genuinely difficult mobilisation, a bond premium that really is that size. The output is a list of questions worth asking, not a finding of anything. Treating it as evidence would be misusing it, and the printed page says so.

Why owners and lenders care

A front-loaded schedule means that if the job stops halfway, more has been paid out than has been built — the money is ahead of the work, and the remaining contract balance will not finish it. That is the whole risk a lender is managing on a construction loan, and the schedule of values is where it is set, in week one, before anybody is watching.

What it does not do

It looks at one schedule in isolation. It does not compare it to a takeoff, to the bids behind it, or to what has actually been billed since. That is the paid product.