For developers, owners & general contractors
Every dispute on your project was signed months before it surfaced.
The scope gap, the un-meetable notice window, the insurance clause no carrier ever endorsed — they were all in the subcontracts on day one. Redline finds the fight while it's still a conversation: a pre-signing alignment layer for your entire bid list, at negotiation prices instead of litigation prices.
Qualifying founding projects run free · one bid list, no commitment beyond it · your subs' workspaces stay theirs
The lawsuit doesn't start in the field.
It starts at the signing table — unread.
You don't have a litigation problem. You have a misalignment problem that sat silent in thirty subcontracts until it got expensive. The same four patterns, project after project:
The sub priced floor prep as excluded
§6.3 makes them own all substrate preparation
→ Change-order war at month 4
Payment contingent on the owner paying first
The owner slow-pays a draw; the sub is financing your project
→ A lien — from a sub you never had a problem with
Missed claims notice waives the claim entirely
One late email from the field forfeits a valid delay claim
→ Resentment, then a lawyer, on money that was legitimately owed
No damages for delay — time is the sole remedy
Delay leads most dispute surveys (Arcadis)
→ The acceleration fight lands at project end, all at once
Retainage released at final completion of the entire project
The flooring sub finished 14 months before closeout
→ A lien filed to shake loose money you always intended to pay
Additional insured, primary & noncontributory
The sub's carrier never endorsed the forms
→ A coverage fight on top of the injury claim
Every one of these is cheap to fix in week one and brutal to fix in year two. The fight should happen on facts, before signature — not on memories, after mobilization.
$60.1M
Average value of surveyed North American construction disputes, 2024
12.5 months
Average time to resolve one
#1
Contract and specification reviews — ranked the most effective claims-avoidance technique
Source: Arcadis Global Construction Disputes Report, 2024 edition (North America).
The industry's own dispute data says the most effective prevention is the one thing nobody has time to do properly: actually reviewing the contracts — all of them, on both sides of the table. That's the layer Redline runs.
And your dispute doesn't need a megaproject price tag: one contested change-order package, or one lien and the bond to clear it, burns more than this program costs for the whole job.
The plan
Three steps. One project. Aligned before signed.
You sponsor the bid list
Every subcontractor invited onto the project gets a full Redline review of their subcontract — paid by you, run in their own private workspace. No sub pays, no sub is gated, no sub opts into anything but reading their own contract properly.
Structured asks replace ad-hoc redlines
Instead of thirty differently-formatted markups (or silence, followed by claims), your team receives uniform, page-cited negotiation packets — each ask with proposed language, organized the same way, every time. Structured asks in one format get answered in days; thirty differently-formatted markups sit in inboxes for weeks.
You watch the board go green
You see who is signing with open high-risk items — and who has cleared the sign-off gate. You see status across the whole bid list — which contracts have cleared the gate, which still carry open items, where those items cluster — and buyout accelerates because the negotiation is organized instead of avoided.
Don't take our word for the board — click through it.
An interactive preview: three projects at different stages, the bid-list board, the asks, the template patterns, the vault — and the trust wall, demonstrated.
The part that makes it work
Redline stays on the sub's side of the table.
That's exactly why it works for you.
A GC-owned review tool that subs don't trust produces dishonest inputs and zero dispute prevention. A sub-side tool you sponsorproduces honest negotiation before signature. The trust wall isn't a limitation of the program — it is the program.
What you see
- Review status across the entire bid list
- Sign-off readiness — which contracts still carry undecided high-risk items
- The asks each sub chose to send you, in one uniform format
- Where open items cluster across trades (your template, telling on itself)
What you never see
- A sub's margins, pricing, or financial position
- Their internal risk decisions and what they chose to absorb
- Their insurance profile and coverage gaps
- Anything in their workspace they didn't explicitly send you
Think escrow, or title insurance: one party often pays, both parties trust it — because what's shared is structural and transparent, not discretionary. The wall is enforced by architecture, not by policy.
One more reason sponsorship beats tolerating: many subcontracts restrict sharing the document with third parties — a point for your counsel. Sponsorship puts the review inside a process you've sanctioned. It converts a quiet confidentiality question on every project into a structured process you can point to.
One hub. Three altitudes. Every party sees what it governs.
When a developer sponsors and a GC runs buyout, there are two walls, not one — and both protect the program. A developer reading clause-level asks would be negotiating the GC's buyout; a GC reading a sub's workspace would poison the inputs. Each altitude gets its own instrument:
Owner / Developer
The assurance layer
- Readiness across every project — contracts signed gate-clear
- Insurance required-vs-certificated checks across the list (endorsement forms still close the gap — and we say so)
- The pre-signing alignment record: a dated internal record of diligence, organized the way your counsel will want it if anything is ever contested
Never clause-level negotiation — that's buyout.
GC / Buyout administrator
The negotiation board
- The full bid-list board — invitation to signature
- Every ask, in one uniform packet format, with accept / counter / discuss
- Template patterns across the whole trade population
Never a sub's workspace, findings, or margins.
Subcontractor
The private workspace
- The complete review — redline, exposure math, sign-off gate
- Their own decisions, standards, and playbook
- Full control of what gets sent up, and when
Never charged a dollar under sponsorship.
The compounding win
When 25 of 30 subs flag the same clause, you don't have a subcontractor problem.
You have a template problem — and it's fixable once, at the source. Sponsored reviews turn your entire trade population into a feedback instrument for your own paper: the clauses that generate friction on every job surface as a pattern, not as thirty separate arguments.
GCs who tune their templates get faster signings, tighter bids — subs price known risk instead of padding against unknown risk — and fewer of the disputes that start in the template. Nobody sells this view of your own contracts today.
Pattern reporting is delivered concierge-style during founding pilots while the analytics dashboard is built into the platform.
What a pattern report reads like
§11.3 — Broad-form indemnity
83%25 of 30 subs asked for comparative fault
§4.2 — 48-hour claims notice
73%22 of 30 asked for 14 days + no-prejudice
§5.1 — Retainage tied to project closeout
63%19 of 30 asked for release on their own scope
§9.4 — Cross-project setoff
37%11 of 30 asked to confine setoff to this contract
Illustrative pattern — aggregated and anonymized. Individual workspaces are never exposed.
What every sub on your list receives
The same product subcontractors buy on their own — nothing watered down, nothing rebranded. Sponsoring it tells your trade partners you'd rather negotiate in week one than litigate in year two — and they'll price you accordingly.
§6.3 · Scope of Work · p. 14
Subcontractor shall perform all substrate preparation as required for a complete installation.
substrate preparation to the extent identified in Subcontractor's proposal dated 3/14, Exhibit A
The full redline
Every clause read against the sub's own proposal, their standards, their insurance, and the law of the state where your project sits — page-cited, with proposed replacement language.
The sign-off gate
Twelve questions every contract must answer before signature, and ten risk dimensions scored individually. Nothing clears the gate with undecided high-risk items still open.
Requested revisions — Riverline Tower
§4.2 14-day notice + no-prejudice
Usually granted§5.1 Retainage on own-scope acceptance
Negotiable§11.3 Comparative-fault carve-out
Usually grantedThe negotiation packet
A professional, structured set of asks — organized by how likely you are to accept each one — that lands on your desk instead of a lien or a lawyer.
The math your CFO will do anyway
Free
A qualifying founding project: every subcontract on one bid list, reviewed before signature, with concierge status reporting. After that, the published bands.
Tens of thousands
What outside-counsel review of a 30-sub bid list typically runs. Published flat-fee averages for a single subcontract read start near $300 (ContractsCounsel); a negotiation-grade markup with rounds of back-and-forth costs multiples of that — and comes with no status board and no uniform ask channel.
Six figures
The legal spend on ONE contested claim before anyone sees a courtroom — on a dispute that was visible in the paper the whole time.
On a project's budget, sponsored review prices like a line item next to bonds and insurance — a fraction of a percent of contract value, protecting all of it. And buyout gets faster, because organized negotiation beats avoided negotiation every time.
Program pricing
Priced like the project control it is.
Per project, never per seat, never per review — a sponsor who pays by the review rations reviews, and the whole point is that every contract on the list goes through the gate.
Founding project
- Every subcontract on one bid list — up to 30
- One conversation tells you whether the project qualifies
- Concierge status + pattern reporting
- No commitment beyond the project
- Founding band pricing locked for as long as you stay
Per-project sponsorship
Banded by project value, budgeted in general conditions next to bonds and insurance. Every subcontract on the bid list included.
| Project value | Program | Eff. rate |
|---|---|---|
| Under $10M | $7,500 | ≤ 0.08% |
| $10M – $50M | $15,000 | 0.03 – 0.15% |
| $50M – $150M | $30,000 | 0.02 – 0.06% |
| $150M + | Custom | — |
For reference: by our estimate, leading construction platforms run 0.1–0.2% of construction volume. This is one layer, priced like it.
Portfolio partnership
- Every project, every bid list
- Template analytics across your whole trade population
- The assurance layer for owners, lenders, and carriers
- A seat shaping the sponsor platform roadmap
The one non-negotiable at every tier: no subcontractor is ever charged under a sponsored program. The project pays; the inputs stay honest; the prevention works.
A straight answer about where this stands
The review engine, the sign-off gate, and the negotiation packet your subs would use are live in production today — you can walk a real run yourself on the showcase page. The sponsor-side software (the portfolio board, the template analytics) is being built now, so founding pilot projects run hands-on: your subs get the full product immediately, and we deliver your status and pattern reporting ourselves while the dashboard catches up.
We're new, and we'd rather tell you that than pretend otherwise. Judge us the way you'd judge a sub bidding your work: on the actual output. Founding partners get founding pricing, kept for as long as they stay — and a real say in what the sponsor dashboard becomes.
The questions your counsel will ask
Can we see what our subs' reviews found?›
No — and that's deliberate. You see review status, sign-off readiness, and the asks each sub chooses to send. Their workspace, analysis, and decisions stay theirs, permanently. The moment subs suspect otherwise, the honest inputs stop and the dispute prevention stops with them.
Is this legal advice? Is Redline mediating?›
Neither. Redline is preparation infrastructure, not a law firm and not a dispute-resolution forum. Each party keeps its own counsel; the tool makes the pre-signing conversation organized, factual, and early. Nothing here replaces attorney review of anything that matters.
Won't this just generate more pushback on our contracts?›
It surfaces the pushback that already exists — early, structured, and priced, instead of late, chaotic, and litigated. Most asks are cheap to grant or cheap to explain. The expensive version is the sub who signs silently, gambles, and loses.
Who owns the data?›
Each party owns its own workspace. Your subs' contracts and analyses are theirs; your project reporting is yours. Contracts run in a private cloud and are never used to train shared AI.
Can a sub keep using Redline after our project?›
Yes — their account is theirs, and their sponsored reviews on your project stay free to them. Many will keep using it on the rest of their book, which makes the whole trade population better at contracts. That's good for everyone, including you.
Is any of this the practice of law? What about privilege?›
No. Redline is not a law firm, provides no legal advice to any party, and creates no attorney-client relationship — on either side of the table. Nothing here is privileged: findings and packets are business records, and each party should route genuinely sensitive analysis through its own counsel. Your sponsorship makes you a payor, not a participant in the sub's analysis — the wall guarantees you never see it.
What if our GC doesn't want this?›
Then start with why they should: buyout gets faster when asks arrive structured instead of ad-hoc; the confidentiality problem of subs reviewing their paper with outside tools gets converted into a sanctioned process; and the template patterns are a report their own counsel will actually want. If the GC still balks, that's worth knowing before you sign THEM — a builder who resists organized pre-signing alignment is telling you how change orders will go.
We're the developer — our GC runs buyout. Who sees what?›
Each altitude gets its own instrument. You get the assurance layer: readiness across projects, insurance required-vs-carried status across the list — never a sub's coverage detail — and a dated pre-signing alignment record for your lender, carrier, and counsel. Your GC gets the negotiation board — the bid list, the asks, the template patterns. Clause-level negotiation stays at the buyout level, by design: assurance without meddling is what keeps the GC relationship and the program healthy. Flip between both views in the command center preview.
Who actually pays for it?›
The project does — sponsored review budgets like bonds, insurance, and every other project control: a line item on the job, typically carried in general conditions. On GMP and cost-plus work, agree up front where the line lands (owner-reimbursable general conditions is the usual answer) so a developer sponsoring directly isn't paying twice through the GC's fee. The one non-negotiable: no subcontractor is ever charged for a sponsored review. The moment subs pay to be reviewed under your program, the honesty of the inputs — and the dispute prevention — dies with it.
What does it cost beyond the pilot?›
The bands are published above: per-project sponsorship from $7,500 to $30,000 by project value — a few hundredths of a percent of the work, budgeted like bonds and insurance — and portfolio partnerships are annual, shaped to your pipeline. The founding project itself is free if it qualifies — one bid list, no commitment beyond it — and one conversation tells you whether it does.
Run one project aligned.
Then compare it to the last one.
A founding pilot is one bid list, sponsored end to end: every subcontract reviewed before signature, structured asks instead of ad-hoc redlines, concierge status reporting, and a sign-off board that shows which subcontracts cleared the gate and which still carry open items.
- Free for qualifying founding projects — one bid list, no commitment beyond it
- Every sub on the bid list included, in their own private workspace
- Uniform negotiation packets your counsel can process in an afternoon
- Founding pricing kept for as long as you stay
Not a law firm. Not legal advice. Preparation for the professionals on both sides of your table.
