A schedule of values (SOV) divides the contract sum into billable line items, often by trade, CSI division, building area or phase, each with a dollar value. The owner or architect approves it at the start of the job. Every pay application then reports progress against those lines, and approved change orders are added as new lines.
Why it matters
The SOV decides how fast you can bill. Lines that are too coarse make progress hard to prove; lines that don’t map to your cost codes make it hard to see over or under billing. Front-loading (inflating early-activity lines) is common, and owners and architects look for it.
Worked example
Illustrative: Riverside Medical Center has a $48.2M original contract. The SOV splits it into lines such as general conditions, sitework, concrete, steel, MEP and finishes, with $1.1M of prior approved change orders added as separate lines. When CO #14 for $86,400 is executed, it becomes its own SOV line, so the total scheduled value becomes $49,386,400 and the fire damper work can be billed on Pay App #9.
Common mistakes
- Building the SOV without mapping lines to job cost codes.
- Heavy front-loading that the architect rejects or that creates large over billings.
- Rolling change orders into existing lines so they can’t be traced.
How os.construction handles it
We’re building SOV lines that map to cost codes on the same data core, so each line can show billed-to-date next to cost-to-date and budget.