Construction management for tenant improvement projects: keeping cost and TIA recovery in sync

Construction management is the professional service of managing a project’s schedule, cost, quality, safety, scope, and function on the owner’s behalf, per the CMAA’s definition of construction management. On a tenant improvement (TI) buildout, the tenant is that owner, coordinating architects, general contractors, and vendors to deliver the space on time and on budget. What makes TI construction management different from a typical capital project is that a second deadline runs alongside the construction schedule: the landlord’s TIA draw deadline, the date by which the tenant must submit substantiated costs to collect the allowance the lease already promised.

Why cost tracking and TIA recovery are usually run as two separate processes#

In most portfolios, construction cost tracking and TIA recovery live in different systems, owned by different people. Construction management tracks budget against actuals, verified and pending change orders, and vendor performance on the project itself. See what REAL’s construction management platform tracks. Lease administration separately tracks the TIA amount, the collection deadline, and what’s been submitted to the landlord. See how TIA recovery actually works. Neither team is wrong to track what it tracks. The problem is that the TIA draw deadline usually requires the same substantiated cost documentation the construction team is already producing, and if that documentation doesn’t reach the lease administration team before the deadline, the allowance can revert to the landlord even though the money was spent and the work was done.

What tracking both together actually looks like#

The right-hand column isn’t a different process bolted onto the left. It’s the same cost data, submitted to two audiences: the internal budget owner and the landlord’s draw request, on the same timeline. A change order that gets verified for the internal budget should be the same documentation that supports the next TIA draw request, not a separate exercise redone later under deadline pressure.

Where this shows up at portfolio scale#

For a single project, running these as two loosely connected processes is manageable with enough manual follow-up. Across a portfolio running multiple buildouts a year, the gap compounds. Bid evaluation and change order tracking done well can already reduce delivered cost; REAL’s own construction management data, drawn from analyzing 1.2 billion square feet across enterprise portfolios, shows a 14 percent average cost reduction when bids and change orders are benchmarked against a portfolio’s own delivery history rather than evaluated project by project. See how bid evaluation against your own track record works. That same benchmarked cost data is exactly what a TIA draw request needs to be airtight, so the connection between construction management and TIA recovery isn’t extra work. It’s using the same data twice instead of rebuilding it.

What to check across your own portfolio#

A quick way to find out whether this gap exists already: pull the last four or five completed TI buildouts and check two things for each. First, was the TIA fully collected, or did any portion revert to the landlord. Second, was the documentation used for the draw request the same documentation the construction team already had on file, or was it reconstructed separately closer to the deadline. If it’s the second answer more often than not, the two processes are running separately, and that’s the gap worth closing before the next round of buildouts starts.