09: Standard of Care & Independence

The most consequential document in the set. C-PACE puts a design professional’s seal on a projection that a capital provider will underwrite and an owner will rely on, and it does so without a numerical threshold to hide behind. The sheet gives guarantee-versus-opinion framing line by line, a scope reliance checklist, and standard model paragraphs for opinion, projection limitation, completion certification, and eligibility. Its center is the section on independence, because the pressure in a C-PACE project runs in an unfamiliar direction: rather than pressure to cut, someone may want a more favorable number so the package sizes up, and that request arrives politely, from the client, late in the schedule. The assumption schedule is not a negotiating instrument. Six specific requests are paired with how to respond, and a decline that cannot be accommodated goes in writing, in the medium the request arrived in.