- procurement
- construction
Construction manager at risk is a delivery method in which the owner hires a construction manager early, during design, to advise on cost and constructability, and the CM then commits to a guaranteed maximum price to build the project. The "at risk" is literal: overruns above the GMP are the manager's exposure, not the owner's, which aligns the CM with holding the budget.
CMAR matters to the platform because it shapes the cost record. Under this method the early opinion of probable cost and the later GMP are the checkpoints where a public project's price is set and can be reconstructed, and the CM is usually selected through a qualifications-based request for qualifications rather than low bid. Knowing a project used CMAR tells the analyst which documents carry the authoritative numbers and how the contractor was chosen.