gantt
Almost every unpaid change order started the same way. Somebody on site was asked to do something that was not in the drawings, the answer was yes because the crew was standing there, and the paperwork was going to be sorted out later. Later arrived at the end of the job, in a conversation where the client remembered the request differently and the only record was a text message.
The document is not the hard part. A change order is a short form, and the shape of it has been settled for decades. The hard part is the order of operations, because a change order signed after the work is finished is a request for goodwill, while the same document signed before the crew moves is an amendment to the contract.
A change order modifies the contract itself. Once it is executed it changes three things at the same time: the scope of work, the contract sum, and where required the contract time. That is why it needs signatures from the parties to the contract, and why a form emailed with a price on it is not a change order until it comes back signed.
The industry standard form makes the structure obvious. The American Institute of Architects publishes G701, titled simply Change Order, and a subcontractor version, G701S. Both carry the same four elements: a description of the change, the adjustment to the contract sum, the adjustment to the contract time, and the signatures. The form exists because those four items travel together. A change that adjusts money but says nothing about time has silently agreed that the work takes no longer than the original scope.
What a change order is not: it is not a request, it is not a directive, and it is not the same as a clarification that carries no cost. Each of those is a different piece of paper with a different legal effect, and treating them as interchangeable is where most disputes begin.
The test for whether a change order is needed is not size, it is scope. A two hour task that is outside the contract documents needs paper. A large task that was always in the drawings does not, no matter how much it hurts.
| Document | Who issues it | What it does | Work starts when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Change order request (COR) | Contractor | Proposes scope and price for a change | It does not. It is a proposal |
| Change order | Owner and contractor sign | Amends the contract sum, scope and time | On execution |
| Construction change directive | Owner and architect | Orders the work before price is agreed | Immediately, price settled after |
| Minor change in the work | Architect | Clarifies with no cost or time effect | Immediately |
The construction change directive is the one most small teams have never used and most need. AIA publishes it as G714. It exists for the situation where the owner needs work to proceed but the parties have not agreed on the price. The directive orders the work, records the method by which cost will later be determined, and preserves the contractor's right to be paid. Without it, urgent work proceeds on a verbal instruction, which is the weakest position available.
A change order request is the piece that gets skipped on small jobs, usually to save a day. The cost of skipping it is that the price conversation happens after the money has already been spent, when the contractor has no leverage left and the client has every reason to negotiate.
The minor change is worth understanding precisely because it is the exception. It covers a clarification that changes neither the sum nor the time. The moment a clarification has a cost, it stops being minor no matter what it is called, and the correct response is a change order request rather than a shrug.
The lag is not laziness. It has causes that repeat on every job.
Field pressure is the first. A crew is on site, the question comes at seven in the morning, and stopping to price the change costs a half day of idle labor. Saying yes and papering it later is the rational choice in that moment and the expensive one by the end of the job.
Pricing takes real time is the second. A change may need a supplier quote and a subcontractor number before it can be priced honestly. Two days for quotes is normal, and two days of a stopped crew is not acceptable, so the work begins.
The third is that nobody owns the change. On a small team the person who hears the request is the superintendent, the person who prices it is the estimator, and the person who signs it is the owner of the company. If the handoff between those three lives in text messages, some changes never reach the second step.
The cure for the first two is the construction change directive, or its equivalent clause in whatever contract is in use: a written instruction to proceed that fixes the pricing method without fixing the price. The cure for the third is a log with a number assigned the day the request is heard, before anyone knows what it will cost.
There is a fourth cost that rarely appears on the form. A change accepted on Tuesday for a modest sum can push a milestone, and a pushed milestone can idle a different trade the following week. That second cost is real, it is harder to prove, and it is almost never recoverable once the change order has been signed with no time extension.
Six items, and every one of them earns its place.
A number and a date. Sequential, assigned when the change is first identified rather than when it is priced. Gaps in the numbering are how it becomes clear that a change fell out of the process.
A description of the changed scope written so a stranger can tell what is included and what is not. Vague descriptions are what get argued about a year later. Reference the drawing, the RFI, or the request that triggered it.
The adjustment to the contract sum, broken into labor, material, equipment, subcontract and markup. A single lump sum invites a negotiation about the whole figure. A breakdown moves the conversation onto specific lines.
The adjustment to the contract time, stated in calendar days, including zero when zero is genuinely the answer. Leaving the field blank is not the same as writing zero, and a blank field will be read as zero by the other side.
A reference to the contract being amended and the new contract sum after the change. This is what makes the document an amendment rather than a memo.
Signatures from the parties whose contract it is, with dates. An unsigned change order is a quote.
The contract almost always fixes the markup. Most agreements state a percentage for overhead and profit on changed work, and often different percentages for work performed by the contractor's own crews versus work performed by subcontractors. Reading that clause once, at the start of the job, prevents a whole category of argument.
Direct cost is the straightforward part: hours at the labor rate the contract allows, material at invoice, equipment at the agreed rate, subcontract at the quoted figure. The part that goes uncounted is everything around it. Remobilising a crew that had been moved to another area is a real cost. Extended general conditions, meaning another week of supervision, site power, dumpsters and temporary facilities, is a real cost that only appears if the schedule impact was claimed.
Then there is cumulative impact. Twenty small changes, each priced correctly in isolation, can together cost more than the sum of their parts because the sequence of work has been disrupted repeatedly. Claiming that as a separate item after the fact is difficult in practice. The defensible alternative is to price each change including its own disruption honestly at the time, and to reserve rights in writing when the schedule impact of a change cannot yet be determined.
The reserving language matters. A change order accepted with a stated time extension of zero, when the effect on the schedule is not yet known, has given away the delay claim. The honest entry is that the time impact is to be determined, with a date by which it will be quantified.
A change order form is a single sheet. The thing that decides whether changes get paid for is the log that tracks every one of them from the moment it is first heard.
A working log has one row per change with the number, the date identified, the source, a one line description, the current state, the amount requested, the amount approved, the days requested, the days approved, and the date of the last action. States are simple: identified, pricing, submitted, approved, rejected, directed under a change directive. Anything that has been in pricing or submitted for more than an agreed number of days gets raised in the weekly meeting.
Two rules make the log work. Nothing gets a number after the fact, so the count of identified changes always exceeds the count of approved ones and the gap is visible. And the pending total is reported alongside the approved total at every meeting, because a job that looks on budget while carrying a large pending column is not on budget.
The practical obstacle is that the log lives in one file, the schedule in another, and the conversation where the change was first mentioned in a chat thread that nobody searches. When a change is a card that carries its own thread, its own dates on the schedule, and the hours booked against it, the log stops being a separate transcription job. A setup where a Gantt board, a calendar and per person hour entry all read from the same cards is worth looking at before building a fifth spreadsheet, and the board types that cover this are the thing to check against the current process. For a small team the question is usually whether the tooling cost is justified at all, which the plans answer in a short read.
Open a numbered change log today and put every change currently in flight into it, including the ones that were agreed verbally and never priced. Then adopt one rule with the crew: nothing outside the drawings starts without either a signed change order or a written instruction to proceed, and the second one is acceptable. If the log needs to sit next to the schedule rather than in another spreadsheet, Pinateca can hold the change cards, the dates and the hours in one place.
A change order request is a proposal from the contractor describing the changed scope and its price. It has no effect on the contract until the other party accepts it. A change order is the executed document, signed by the parties, that actually amends the contract sum, the scope and where applicable the contract time.
It can, but not on a verbal instruction alone. The safe route is a written directive to proceed that records the scope and the method by which the price will later be determined. AIA publishes this as G714, the Construction Change Directive, and most other contract families have an equivalent clause. Starting on a text message leaves the price to be negotiated after the money is spent.
The parties to the contract being amended, which on an owner and contractor agreement means both of them, with the architect signing where the contract requires it. For changes flowing down to a subcontractor, a separate change order to that subcontract is needed, signed by the contractor and the subcontractor.
State it explicitly in calendar days on the form, including zero when zero is correct. If the effect on the schedule is not yet known, write that the time impact is to be determined and give a date for quantifying it, rather than leaving the field blank. A signed change order with no time extension is generally read as agreement that the change caused no delay.
The test is whether the work is inside the contract documents, not how small it is. A short task outside the agreed scope needs paper, because a pattern of unpapered small changes is what produces a large unrecoverable figure at the end of a job. A clarification that changes neither cost nor time can be handled as a minor change in the work.