Change order
A change order is a written, agreed amendment to the contract scope, price or schedule, signed before the changed work is carried out.
Also known as: Variation · Contract change · CO
Scope changes on nearly every job. The change order is the instrument that keeps a change from becoming an argument: it records what is different, what it costs, what it does to the schedule, and that the client agreed before the work happened.
The failure mode is always the same and always expensive. The client asks for something on site, the builder says yes, the work gets done, and the invoice arrives as a surprise. At that point the builder is negotiating from behind — the work is already built, and the leverage is gone.
A change order that holds up has four things: the scope described in terms a non-builder can check, the price, the schedule impact stated explicitly, and a recorded approval with a date against it before the trade starts.
Run the job, not the paperwork
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