Show the arithmetic: what a change order should look like

Most change orders arrive as a description and a figure. That is a request to be trusted, which is a lot to ask in month fourteen of a difficult job.

What ours carry

• The subcontractor quotes, attached, not summarised
• Our markup, shown as a percentage and a dollar figure
• The schedule impact in days, separated from the cost
• What caused it: a design change, a site condition, or an error, named plainly including when the error was ours

The fourth one is the difficult one

Naming your own errors in writing is uncomfortable and it is the reason owners believe the other three. On a public job it is not optional anyway, because the change goes to a board meeting; we do it on private work for the same reason.

It is slower

Assembling this takes about a day longer than issuing a number. We have never had an owner tell us they would rather have the number sooner.