Owner's engineer scope of work: what to include, and what to leave out

You have decided to bring in an owner's engineer. Now someone on your side has to write down what that engineer will actually do, often from a template built for another kind of project. The owner's engineer scope of work is a short document with long consequences: it decides what each bidder prices, what you can hold the winner to, and which requests return later as extra fees.

For the basics of the role, start with what an owner's engineer does, and when you need one.

What should an owner's engineer scope of work include?

Start from the decisions you have to make, not from a list of engineering disciplines: whether to take the investment decision, which contractor to award, whether to accept the finished work, whether to buy the asset. Write each phase around the decision it feeds, and make it answer five questions. What does the owner's engineer do? What does it hand you, and when? What may it decide for you? Who on your side receives its advice? How will both sides know the phase is finished?

Owner's engineering services are bought phase by phase: include only the phases you need, and draw each boundary clearly. Our six published engagements show how much the work changes across an asset's life.

• Before the investment decision. Independent review of the concept, the basis of design (the assumptions the engineering rests on) and the cost and schedule estimates, plus a risk register your team can own after FID. If you are also buying front-end engineering and FEED services, say whether the owner's engineer produces the FEED or reviews someone else's.
• Choosing the contractors. Contract strategy, the technical sections of the tender package, bid evaluation, and input to the clauses that allocate technical risk. Tendering and contracting support is among the easier phases to scope, because it ends with a signed contract.
• Execution. Review of the contractor's key documents, checks on progress claims and invoices, assessment of change requests, and attendance at named operations and tests. “Review key documents” invites argument; “review the well programmes, installation procedures and test plans” does not.
• Handover and close-out. Witnessing acceptance tests, closing open items, checking the records of what was actually built, and supporting the final settlement of what you owe the contractor, including its final claims. This is where scopes most often stop too early.
• Running the project for you. Day-to-day management is a different role from review. Scope it separately as owner-side project management services, and write down which decisions stay with you.
• An acquisition. Technical due diligence services deserve a phase of their own, with a deadline set by the transaction, not by the project.

What usually goes missing, and comes back as a change order?

Many extra fees on an owner's engineer contract come from work everyone assumed was included and nobody wrote down. Close these gaps before the scope goes out:

• Site attendance. “Witness key tests” without a list turns every trip into a negotiation. List the events and locations, and say who pays for travel.
• Review rounds. A document resubmitted three times is three reviews. State how many rounds are included.
• Schedule slip. The owner's engineer's time follows the contractor's schedule. Agree the rule for extra months now.
• Other parties. A lender's independent engineer, partners' technical reviews and regulator meetings all take time. Write them in.

How do you write the scope so proposals can be compared?

Proposals for owner's engineer services only compare well if every bidder prices the same job.

• Fix the outputs, not the method. Specify deliverables and decision points; let bidders propose method and effort.
• State the assumptions everyone prices. Project duration, site visits, review rounds, reporting frequency. Anything priced differently is listed as a deviation.
• Prescribe one price format. A phase with a clear end compares easily at a fixed price. Where effort follows the contractor's pace, ask for rates plus an effort estimate on your stated assumptions.
• Use one exclusions table, in the same format for every bidder, so the gaps sit side by side.

What moves the price. Effort follows how long the contractor's work runs, how many documents and review rounds you buy, how many site visits and witnessed operations you list, whether any phase needs full-time presence, and how many other parties the owner's engineer answers to. If the budget will not stretch, cut one of these deliberately rather than leaving it vague. Scoring the replies is covered in our note on evaluating bids from the owner's side.

What should you leave out so you don't pay twice?

An owner's engineer checks the contractor's engineering; it should not produce it. Paying your adviser to redo design the contractor already owes you means paying twice and blurring responsibility, because a contractor whose design was approved will argue that part of the risk moved with the approval.

An owner's engineer who redoes the contractor's design has not added a check. They have added a second author.

• Design the contractor owes you. Write “review and comment” rather than “approve”, and state in the contractor's contract that this review does not relieve it of responsibility for its own work.
• The contractor's own quality checks. The owner's engineer audits how quality is controlled and witnesses selected tests. It does not repeat every inspection.
• Full-time presence by default. Continuous supervision earns its cost on critical operations. Scope it there, as operation supervision, not across the whole project.
• Anything that creates a conflict. No bidding for the delivery work, no equipment sales, no commissions.

Warning signs when the scope comes back

How bidders answer the scope tells you how they will behave under it. Watch for these signs:

• Exclusions longer than the scope. A bidder who excludes review rounds, travel and schedule slip has priced a different job.
• Senior names that disappear after the kick-off. Ask what share of each phase the named people will do themselves.
• An offer to approve the contractor's design. A bidder happy to approve is offering you a responsibility problem.
• Links to the contractors you will hire. Ask about current work for, or commercial ties to, firms on your contractor shortlist.
• No questions back. A bidder who asks nothing has probably not read the scope closely.

Owner's engineer scope of work checklist

Before the scope goes to bidders, check that it covers:

• The decision each phase supports, and the date you need it.
• Deliverables and reports for each phase, with format, recipient and due date.
• Decision rights: what the owner's engineer reviews and recommends, and any approvals it may give for you (such as invoices or minor changes within a stated value), never the contractor's design.
• The contractor documents it will review, by name, and the review rounds included.
• Site visits, witnessed tests and meetings with other parties (lender's engineer, partners, regulator), listed, with travel costs assigned.
• The standards the work is checked against, for example NORSOK, ISO or API.
• Named key people, their time per phase and a rule for replacing them.
• One price format on stated assumptions, and a rule agreed in advance for extensions.
• An explicit list of exclusions, and conflict-of-interest terms.
• Who may rely on the deliverables besides you (lenders, partners, a future buyer), agreed before the work starts.
• Confidentiality, ownership of the deliverables and the limit of liability, set in the contract terms rather than left to the proposal.
• What finished means for each phase, and the records handed to you at the end.

If an owner's engineer scope of work is on your desk, send us the decisions it has to support. Every enquiry gets an answer within 24 hours, so you can test the draft before it goes to bidders.