Change order
What the job is worth now — not what you bid. Numbered, priced, approved, and counted.
Why this isn’t a template
Everything free in this space is a spreadsheet or a Word file you fill in and save as CO-3 final FINAL v2. A file can hold one change. It cannot hold the number that actually matters, which is what the contract is worth after all of them — original sum, plus every approved change, with the pending ones visible and deliberately not counted.
That figure is what you bill against. Get it wrong and you under-bill a job you already did the work on.
Pending is not approved
Pending change orders are tracked here and left out of the contract sum on purpose. Billing against work the owner hasn’t signed off is a common way to get an entire payment application held up rather than just the one line — so the tool keeps the two figures apart and shows both.
Say why, not just how much
Different reasons get challenged differently, so the reason is a field rather than an afterthought. An owner request is the easiest to defend if you name who asked and when. An unforeseen condition is the one most likely to be challenged, which is why the description needs to say what was found and why it wasn’t visible at bid. A change an inspector called for is rarely refused once it’s in writing with the item named.
Where it meets the other tools
The estimate is where the original contract sum came from. This is what happens to it. The payment application reads the same contract record, so the two can never disagree about what the job is worth — approve a change here and the billing updates itself. At the end of it, the punch list is what releases the retainage.
For the work itself, the work order dispatches it and the work log proves it was done. On a smaller job where there’s no formal contract, an invoice with the extra itemized is often all this needs to be.
General information, not legal advice. A change order is a contract amendment — what it must contain and how it must be executed depends on your own agreement. Everything is built on your device. Without an account it stays there and goes nowhere else; in a CompliMaint workspace it is a workspace record, and the screen says so.
Questions people ask
- What is a change order in construction?
- A written agreement that changes the original contract — the work, the price, the time, or all three. It is signed by both the contractor and the owner, and until it is signed the change is not authorized. Work done before signature is done at risk.
- Should a pending change order be included in the contract sum?
- No. Only approved change orders change the contract sum. Pending ones should be visible and tracked but excluded from the total, because billing against work the owner has not approved is a common reason an entire payment application is held up rather than just that line.
- What should a change order include?
- A sequential number, the date, a description of what changed and why, the cost broken out into labor, materials, subcontract and equipment with overhead and profit shown separately, any change to the contract time in calendar days, the resulting contract sum, and signature blocks for both parties.
- Why does the reason for a change order matter?
- Because different reasons get challenged differently. An owner-requested change is the easiest to prove if you name who asked and when. An unforeseen condition is the one most likely to be challenged, so the description has to say what was found and why it could not have been seen at bid time. A change an inspector required is rarely refused once it is written down with the inspector and item named.