AI Contract Review for Construction: Callum Cryans on Helping Australian Subcontractors Manage Risk

AI, construction contracts, Contract, subcontractor, technology,

May 20, 2026

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AI-powered contract review is making expert construction contract analysis more accessible to Australian subcontractors.

For many civil and infrastructure subcontractors in Australia, proper construction contract review has traditionally been out of reach. While tier-one builders and major subcontractors often have access to in-house commercial teams, smaller businesses are frequently left to sign subcontract agreements, supply contracts and project terms without fully understanding the commercial risks involved.

In this interview, Callum Cryans, Director of CMC Contracts, explains how AI-powered construction contract review is changing that dynamic by making expert contract analysis, risk identification and contract administration support more accessible to subcontractors that form the backbone of Australia’s construction supply chain.

Drawing on his Tier 1 commercial background across major infrastructure projects, Cryans discusses why early contract review matters, the common risks contractors overlook, and how a hybrid model combining AI with senior commercial expertise could improve the financial health of subcontractors across the industry.

Can you tell us about your background and what led you to establish CMC Contracts? What gaps did you see in the construction industry that led to the creation of your business?

I became a Quantity Surveyor in South Africa after obtaining a BTech in Quantity Surveying. I worked in South Africa for eight years before moving to Australia in 2017, where I joined a brilliant team at Lendlease Engineering (now Acciona) working as a Contract Administrator on the NorthConnex project in Sydney.

That move reshaped my understanding of how to apply my knowledge. The CA and QS functions are similar, but very different in practice. We are essentially the financial and legal gatekeepers on a construction site, but a CA is more office-based and a QS is more site-based (taking daily measurements of works complete).

In 2020, I moved over to John Holland as a Commercial Manager. By then I had eight years’ experience in buildings, two years in tunnelling and two years on road infrastructure. I continued to diversify at John Holland: rail infrastructure for two years, then head office launching new projects under each business unit, and finally two years in water infrastructure before starting CMC Contracts in 2025.

I started CMC Contracts purely because of Artificial Intelligence. I noticed how dramatically AI improved from 2023 to 2024, and I knew the technology was a genuine inflection point for the industry, particularly in contractual letter writing and the administration of contracts. I’d say it’s one of the many industries that will be significantly transformed by AI for the better. I also didn’t want to be the one sitting as an employee being told there wasn’t a job to go to because of AI. So I focused on being part of the transformation, rather than being on the receiving end of it.

As for the gaps, it’s the basics of contract administration that consistently fall through the cracks. Across hundreds of contracts I administered (both upstream and downstream), I noticed that even fundamental principles of contract administration between stakeholders lacked commercial acumen at various stages of the lifecycle.

Understanding those fundamentals and getting that knowledge into the hands of the right people is genuinely valuable. With AI cutting hours of admin time and improving efficiency across the board, it was the perfect time to start CMC Contracts.

For many contractors and subcontractors, contract review is often left until the last minute. Why is it so critical to properly review construction contracts before signing them?

This is an interesting one. Construction contracts always carry embedded and significant risks, and in the eyes of the law, if you don’t adhere to your rights and obligations under the contract, you could be exposed to serious money.

There are two takes on the significance of construction contracts.

The first is to barely look at it, sign it, and then manage the relationship between client and builder outside of the document. There are multiple dimensions to running a successful project, and a focus on relationships can build genuine trust. But the moment a rift appears, that goodwill evaporates and people fall back to the T&Cs of the contract anyway. Usually in a nasty process you’d rather have avoided.

The second is to follow the contract as if it were holy text. The benefit is that you protect your commercial entitlement from the start. The cost is administrative burden, and on bad days, frustrated contracts and frustrated stakeholders on both sides.

There are pros and cons to each method, and the right fit depends on you, your business, your supply chain, and your client. But here is the practical point: you can only choose between those two approaches if you actually understand what’s in the contract before you sign it. Reviewing it properly before signing is the foundation that makes either approach viable. Skip it, and you’re not really picking, you’re just hoping.

What are some of the most common risks you see in subcontract agreements or supply agreements that construction professionals often overlook?

There are four that come up almost every time:

The first is time bars on claims. Notices of dispute, variations, and EOT claims almost always have a contractual window. Typically 7, 14 or 21 days from the trigger event. Miss the window and the entitlement disappears, regardless of how good the underlying claim is. The number of valid variations and EOTs we see written off because nobody noticed the clock had started is staggering.

The second is the latent conditions allocation, particularly on civil subcontracts. There’s a meaningful distinction between a “site information document” and an “information document for tender,” and most standard-form Australian civil contracts treat them very differently. The clauses also tend to differentiate between physical and environmental latent conditions, and the remedies vary. Subcontractors regularly write off costs they were contractually entitled to recover, simply because the clause was read at face value.

The third is the back-to-back risk allocation. Most subcontracts mirror the head contract. The principal pushes the risk down, the head contractor pushes it further down, and by the time it lands on the subbie, the risk is often disproportionate to the margin available to absorb it. Most subbies don’t know what’s in the head contract and don’t know what they’re inheriting.

The fourth is payment claim procedure, particularly the interplay between contractual mechanisms and the relevant Security of Payment Act in the jurisdiction. Get the procedure wrong, and even a perfectly valid payment claim can be rejected or rendered unenforceable.

There are others, indemnities, retention release triggers, set-off rights, termination for convenience but those four cause the most actual financial damage on civil jobs.

Many contractors assume that standard subcontract agreements are “non-negotiable.” From your experience, how much scope is there to negotiate better contract terms?

A lot more than most contractors think. “This is non-negotiable” is sometimes a fact but more often it’s the opening line of a negotiation. Particularly with customers who run sophisticated commercial teams and expect departures to come back marked up. A clean signed contract with no departure schedule actually raises questions on the customer’s side about whether you’ve read it properly.

The scope to negotiate depends on three things:

• First, timing: pre-tender clarification questions get the most leverage, post-tender mark-ups get less, and post-award changes are very hard.
• Second, the strength of your commercial alternative. If the customer needs you specifically for the job, you have leverage; if you’re commoditised, you don’t.
• Third, how you frame the departure. Customers generally accept changes that improve clarity, fix obvious imbalances, or align with market norms. They push back hard on changes that shift fundamental risk allocation without commercial justification.

The practical takeaway: every construction business should have a standard departure schedule i.e the 8–12 clauses they will not sign without amendment. That alone changes the dynamic, even if some departures get rejected.

Construction contracts can be complex and filled with legal language. What are the key clauses contractors and subcontractors should always pay close attention to?

There are six I’d put at the top of the list:

1. Variations: the mechanism for instructing, valuing, and approving them. The most expensive disputes in the industry tend to be variation disputes, and the contract almost always controls who wins them.
2. Extension of Time (EOT) provisions: particularly the notice requirements, the triggering events, and what evidence is required to support a claim. Watch for time bars in the same clause.
3. Payment claim and payment schedule procedure: what constitutes a valid claim, what the response timeframe is, and how it interacts with the relevant Security of Payment Act.
4. Indemnities and liability caps: what you’re indemnifying the principal for, whether the indemnity is capped or uncapped, and whether consequential losses are excluded. Many subcontracts have indemnities that no insurer will fully respond to.
5. Latent conditions / unforeseen events: what triggers the clause, what relief is available, and what notice obligations apply.
6. Termination provisions: particularly termination for convenience. If the principal can terminate without cause, what compensation are you entitled to? Often less than you’d expect.

Liquidated damages, retention and security, set-off rights, novation, and dispute resolution would be the next tier. Important, but the six above are where the day-to-day commercial damage tends to happen.

There is a lot of discussion right now about AI reviewing contracts. Can AI reliably assess construction contracts, or is human expertise still essential?

Both, in different proportions to what most people assume.

AI is now genuinely good at a lot of the work that used to take a junior commercial team a week. It can identify every clause in a 200-page subcontract, compare it against a known risk register, flag deviations from standard form, draft a first-pass departure schedule, and write the first draft of most contractual letters. That work, particularly the volume-heavy, clause-level scanning is where AI has improved the most dramatically over the last two years. Frankly, AI is already better than most humans at it, because humans get tired and AI doesn’t.

Where AI is not yet reliable on its own is on commercial judgement. Knowing which risks matter for this specific project, this specific subcontractor, this specific client relationship. Knowing which battles to fight in negotiation, and which to concede in exchange for something else. Knowing when a clause is contractually unfavourable but commercially fine because the actual risk of it being triggered is low. That kind of judgement still requires someone who has run major projects from the commercial seat.

So my honest answer is: AI alone is not a substitute for a senior commercial manager on a high-value contract. But a senior commercial manager without AI is now working twice as hard for the same outcome. The future, and frankly the present, in the hands of the operators who’ve adopted it, is hybrid: AI handles the volume and the scan, humans handle the judgement.

That’s the model CMC Contracts and CAAi are built on.

Your platform combines technology with expert commercial review. How does this hybrid approach improve risk detection and contract analysis for clients?

The hybrid approach changes the maths of contract review.

A traditional senior-commercial-manager review of a major subcontract takes 6 to 12 hours and costs accordingly. That cost is justifiable on a $10M+ package, but it isn’t on a $500k one, which is why most smaller subcontractors simply don’t get the review done, and absorb the risk.

With AI doing the first pass, the same review takes well under an hour of senior commercial time, and the output is more complete: every clause has been scanned, every deviation from standard form has been flagged, every time bar has been noted, and the draft departure schedule is ready to negotiate. The senior commercial manager then does what they do best, apply judgement to what the AI has surfaced, prioritise the issues that actually matter for this contract and this client, and refine the negotiation strategy.

The result is the same quality of output a tier-1 builder gets on a multi-million-dollar contract, made accessible to a $5M earthworks subcontractor on a $500k job. That’s the structural change the technology enables. It isn’t a cheaper version of contract review, it’s the same review, restructured to be commercially viable for the market segment that has historically been underserved.

What are some of the biggest commercial risks subcontractors face on major infrastructure and construction projects in Australia today?

Four stand out at the moment:

Payment chain stress. Despite Security of Payment legislation in every jurisdiction, payment cycles on major projects continue to stretch. When a head contractor is under financial pressure or in dispute with the principal, the subcontractor wears the cashflow consequence. The recent mid-tier builder insolvencies in Australia have made this risk uncomfortably tangible.

Risk allocation in the tender process. Subbies are being asked to absorb risk – latent conditions, design coordination, programming float, scope ambiguity. They cannot realistically price for this. Either they price it (and lose the tender) or they don’t (and wear it). Both options are expensive. The third option, which is to negotiate the risk allocation before signing, is the one most subbies underuse.

Time-bar discipline. The volume of valid variations and EOT entitlements that never get paid because the procedural requirements weren’t followed is staggering. This isn’t a legal problem. It’s an admin problem. The contract gave the subbie the entitlement; the subbie’s process let it expire.

Scope creep through informal channels. Verbal instructions, “just go ahead and we’ll sort it later,” scope changes captured only on daily allocation sheets. The work gets done, the money doesn’t get recovered, and by the time the variation gets formalised, the records to support it are gone or fragmented.

These are the four that we see cost the most actual money. They’re about how the contract gets administered day-to-day.

Many disputes in construction stem from misunderstandings in contract terms and conditions. How can better contract management reduce disputes and protect project margins?

Most construction disputes don’t start with a misunderstanding, they start with a record gap. The two parties had a different view of what was agreed, and neither side has documentation strong enough to settle it without escalation.

The cheapest dispute is the one that gets resolved at the site instruction or NOD stage, while both parties still have working memory of the facts and the relationship is still intact. The most expensive is the one that runs to adjudication or court 18 months later, with both sides reconstructing the timeline from incomplete records.

Better contract management compresses that timeline. It means: every site instruction is acknowledged in writing. Every variation has a paper trail from instruction to valuation to acceptance. Every NOD goes out within the contractual window. Every EOT claim is supported by contemporaneous progress records. Every payment claim references the specific contractual clause it relies on.

None of that is glamorous work . But it is the difference between a project with a 5% margin that delivers 5% margin, and the same project that delivers 2% because half the entitlements never made it to the payment schedule. On a $50M civil subcontract, that’s $1.5M in margin, which dwarfs the cost of doing the contract administration properly in the first place.

How can early contract review improve negotiation outcomes for contractors and subcontractors before work even begins?

Three concrete ways:

First, it identifies the showstoppers, the clauses that you fundamentally cannot or should not sign in their current form. Identifying these before you’ve priced the tender means you can flag them in tender clarifications, when the head contractor still has time to consider amendments. Identifying them after award means a much harder negotiation, often with no leverage.

Second, it allows risk-adjusted pricing. Some risks aren’t worth negotiating away. They’re cheaper to absorb if they’re priced for. But you can only price for a risk if you’ve identified it. Early review converts blind risk into priced risk, which is the difference between a profitable tender and one that fails on the first variation.

Third, it signals commercial sophistication to the customer. A subbie that comes to the table with a thoughtful departure schedule and clear questions is treated differently (both in negotiation and across the life of the project) than one who signs whatever is put in front of them. That dynamic matters, and it starts at the first contract review.

For subcontractors in Australia who may not have a dedicated commercial team, what practical steps can they take to better manage contract risk?

Five practical steps, in order of return on effort:

1. Build a standard departure schedule. The 8–12 clauses you will not sign without amendment. Use it on every contract. It takes a senior commercial manager half a day to build once; it pays you back on every job.
2. Maintain a contract obligations register on each project. A simple spreadsheet with every notice, claim deadline, and reporting obligation, calendarised. Missing a deadline is the most common and most preventable cause of lost entitlement.
3. Standardise your notice and variation letters. A library of templated correspondence i.e NOD, EOT, variation submission, payment claim, all drafted once by someone who knows the contract, then reused with project-specific facts. Saves hours and reduces procedural errors.
4. Document everything in writing, including verbal instructions. “As discussed on site this morning, I confirm the principal’s representative has instructed the following additional work…” Sent within the day. Five minutes of admin closes the records gap that costs subbies most of their disputed entitlement.
5. Outsource the big reviews. For the major contracts i.e head contracts, subcontracts above your usual threshold, anything novel, get a senior commercial review. Pre-AI, that was prohibitively expensive for small contractors. Post-AI, the cost has dropped to the point where it’s commercially viable on a much wider range of contracts.

That last point is exactly why CAAi exists. We built it to give small civil subcontractors access to the same standard of contract review that tier-1 builders have always had, without the tier-1 price tag.

Finally, looking ahead, how do you see contract management evolving in the Australian construction industry over the next five to ten years?

Three things will define the next decade:

AI will change the routine. Within five years, the volume-heavy work of contract administration – clause review, drafting first-pass correspondence, tracking deadlines, generating claim particulars will be done predominantly by AI tools. The contract administrators who use those tools will deliver more work, more consistently, at lower cost. The ones who don’t will struggle to compete. The role won’t disappear, but its shape will change significantly.

Commercial judgement becomes the premium. As the routine work gets cheaper, the value of senior commercial judgement increases because the judgement is what AI can’t replicate yet, and probably won’t for a while. Knowing which risks matter, when to negotiate, when to escalate, when to compromise, that’s the skill that will become more valuable, not less.

The market for small-contractor contract support opens up. For most of my career, proper contract review has been the privilege of tier-1 builders and large subcontractors who could afford an in-house team. That market structure is changing. Small civil contractors and trade subcontractors will increasingly have access to the same quality of contract administration that has historically been reserved for the largest players. That’s a structural shift, and I think it will quietly improve the commercial health of the Australian construction industry over the next decade, particularly for the SMEs that make up the bulk of the supply chain.

I’m optimistic about all three. Construction has run on the same contract-administration playbook for forty years. The next ten years will look very different.

To find out more, visit CMC Contracts or get in touch with Callum Cryans on LinkedIn. Information on CAAi, the AI-native contract admin tool built by CMC Contracts, is available at caai.com.au or www.cmccontracts.com.au for commercial support on any project.

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