The List Said 15%
The building was bigger than presented. We knew that within minutes of walking in. Materials all over the place, with the first two main floors holding most of it, but every floor above carrying its share of equipment too. Big AC units. Indoor units, outdoor units. Materials wherever you looked.
The 15% Problem
Then we took the list we’d been given, the client’s inventory of record, and held it up against what was in front of us.
It covered about 15% of what was actually on site.
Sit with that number from a lender’s chair for a second. Somewhere, decisions about this property were resting on a document that missed most of what was in the building.
A gap like that changes the job. You’re no longer confirming a list. You’re building one.
Counting Before We Could Start
We couldn’t even start in the main building. There was a storage space next door full of inventory that had to be moved over first, everything you can imagine for a high-rise with luxury residences, restaurants, and rooftop amenities. So we inventoried as they moved it, and nothing came into the building uncounted.
First Floor to Rooftop
From there, first floor to rooftop. The system wasn’t complicated, and that was the point. Whatever big equipment sat on a floor got logged under that floor number, so a unit could always be traced back to where it actually stood. When the same item turned up twice, we didn’t guess. We labeled it for revision, whether it was a duplicate entry or simply another of the same unit sitting on that floor or elsewhere in the building.
Nine days on site. Eleven, twelve hours a day. A little over 1,000 line items by the end, each one tied to a floor, a category, a location, a quantity, a unit, and a supporting photo. It was the biggest project we’ve taken on to date, and more than we expected walking in. We methodically pulled through and finished the job.
What the Client Received
What the client received wasn’t a pile of notes. It was a workbook. Findings organized by floor. Summaries by floor and by equipment. And a discrepancy report lining up every item the client had listed against what we actually found on site, so if anyone down the line asks why the count says what it says, the answer is on the page with a photo behind it.
Before You Trust Your List
If you’re the one responsible for a property like this, the honest advice is to treat the list you have as unverified until someone physically checks it. Ours came in at 15%. It took nine days in the building and four to five weeks start to finish to replace it with a workbook that investors, banks, receivers, and lenders could put their weight on. Whatever your building holds, the count is only real once someone has stood in front of every item on it.
Facing a property where the list doesn’t match the building? Schedule a consultation and we’ll talk through what verification would look like for your site.
