How Edrak cut progress-payment certification from 17 days to 2 at a real estate developer

The company

The developer builds residential and mixed-use projects, with nine sites in active construction and several contractors engaged on each.

Every month, each contractor submits a payment application: the work it claims to have completed, priced against the bill of quantities, with variations, materials on site and retention.

Certifying those applications is where the developer’s money meets the contractor’s claims. Around 38 applications arrive each month across the portfolio.

Certification was slow where it mattered most

For each application, the quantity surveying team had to establish:

• Whether each claimed quantity matched the BOQ and the measured progress on site
• Whether the cumulative claim reconciled with every previous certificate
• Whether variations were approved, priced and not double-counted
• Whether materials on site were verified and correctly valued
• Whether retention, advances and deductions were computed per the contract

The evidence lived in BOQs, progress reports, site records, variation registers and the certificates of every previous month.

With 38 applications a month, the team sampled: it checked the largest lines closely and trusted the rest. Disputed lines went back and forth by email. Certification regularly ran past contractual deadlines, and late certification meant late payment, strained contractors and, on two occasions, suspended work.

Starting with payment applications

The developer deployed Atlas around one process: receiving, verifying and preparing the certification of contractor payment applications.

Foundry connected the records the QS team already worked from:

• Bills of quantities and contract price schedules
• Every previous payment certificate per contract
• Approved variation registers
• Monthly progress reports and site measurement records
• Contract terms: retention, advance recovery, deduction rules

The developer defined tolerance thresholds, escalation rules and the approvals each certificate required.

Atlas learned each contract’s commercial mechanics, then applied them to every line of every application.

From claim to checked certificate

When an application arrived, Atlas matched every claimed line to the BOQ, reconciled cumulative quantities against prior certificates, and compared claimed progress with the site records for the period.

The QS opened a prepared file:

• Every line verified, with claimed versus supported quantity
• Discrepancies flagged with the record that contradicts the claim
• Variations traced to their approval or flagged as unapproved
• Retention, advance recovery and deductions computed per the contract
• A draft certificate with the recommended certified amount

Where a claim needed a site confirmation, Atlas sent the specific question to the project engineer with the relevant records attached, and the answer returned into the file.

Certification authority stayed with people

A payment certificate is a commercial commitment. The developer kept its controls explicit:

• The quantity surveyor reviewed and approved every certificate
• The project director countersigned before release
• Flagged discrepancies above threshold required written resolution
• Unapproved variations could not enter a certificate

Every certified line carried its evidence. An auditor could move from the certificate to the BOQ line, the site record and the prior certificates behind it.

Full verification replaced sampling, and the approvals stayed exactly where they were.

Measured across the portfolio

The developer ran Atlas on two projects for one quarter, compared outcomes against its own certification log, then extended it to all nine.

• Median certification cycle fell from 17 days to 2, measured from application receipt to issued certificate
• Line-item verification reached 100%, replacing a sampling practice the team itself had flagged as a risk
• Overclaims were caught at the line level in the first pass, including cumulative quantities that exceeded the BOQ across months
• No certification deadline was missed in the two quarters following full rollout
• 100% of certificates retained QS and project-director approval, confirmed by the register

Contractors were paid on time against verified work, which removed the payment disputes that had previously spilled into site progress.

A different month for the commercial team

The QS team stopped re-keying quantities between spreadsheets and started spending its time on the flagged lines: the claims that need measurement judgment, negotiation or a site visit.

Project directors signed certificates with the evidence one click away instead of trusting a summary sheet.

Finance gained a portfolio view it never had: certified exposure, retention held and variation liability per project, current to the latest certificate.

The portfolio’s commercial memory

Foundry retained every certificate, discrepancy and resolution, linked to the contract, contractor and BOQ lines involved.

When the same contractor claimed the same pattern on another project, the history surfaced. When a variation resurfaced under a new description, the register caught it.

Commercial lessons stopped resetting with each project team.

Extending the operating model

With certification running, the developer began applying Atlas to adjacent commercial workflows:

• Variation review and pricing checks
• Contractor final accounts
• Monthly cost reporting against budget per project
• Consultant invoice verification
• Handover documentation and defect-liability tracking

Each follows the same model: Atlas verifies and prepares; the commercial team judges, approves and stays accountable.

The outcome

The developer needed certification to be both faster and stricter, across a growing portfolio, without growing the team.

Atlas and Foundry cut the cycle from seventeen days to two, verified every line of every application, and kept every certificate under human approval.

Contractors are paid on time. The developer pays for exactly the work that was done.