Reconciling a construction proposal that grew three times

We needed a retaining wall built. It started with a budgetary number, the kind you get early to find out whether a project is a project at all. By the time a formal contract arrived, the price had moved up three separate times.

Each increase had a reason attached. Engineering came back, the design got revised, scope was clarified. They arrived weeks apart, in different emails, each one asking me to accept a new total on the strength of a paragraph. I stopped replying and built a page.

The page

A single self-contained HTML file behind a password, written with an AI agent in an afternoon. Title: reconciling the proposal — together.

• A timeline. Every drawing, estimate, proposal and email in date order.
• Each increase, walked separately. What changed between these two versions, and does the price move match the change?
• A cross-check on the rate card. Their own published rates, multiplied out.
• The contract terms. The risk-allocation clause, the temporary easement, the time-and-materials carve-out for hillside shoring, and a typo in the payment terms.
• A short, specific ask at the end.

Every claim sits beside the drawing, email or rate line it came from. They get a link, not an eleven-page PDF.

I left the company, the people and the figures out of this post. The page stays behind its password.