A change order is a formal written amendment to the construction contract, agreed by owner and contractor, that alters the scope, the price, the time for completion, or all three. Once executed it becomes part of the contract.
Changes arise from design development, owner requests, unforeseen site conditions, errors or omissions in the documents, regulatory requirements, and unavailable specified products. Some are avoidable. Most are not, which is why every standard form of contract contains a mechanism for them.
The distinction that causes most disputes is between a change order and a change directive. A change order is agreed before the work proceeds. A directive instructs the contractor to proceed while price and time remain unsettled. Working under a directive means performing work whose commercial terms are still open, and the volume of that work is worth watching carefully.
Most change order processes are built to answer one question: how much? The schedule question is usually handled with a line saying no extension of time is sought, signed by someone who has not modelled the sequence.
That line is often the most expensive sentence in the document. Time given away at the point of agreement cannot easily be recovered later, and it is given away because the schedule impact was never calculated.
There are three separate impacts, and they compound:
A change adding three days of physical work can consume five weeks of programme once a three week approval cycle and a resequenced follow on trade are counted. Whether that matters depends entirely on whether the affected activity sits on the critical path or carries float.
There is a second, quieter problem. Individually, small changes each carry a defensible no time impact assessment. Collectively, thirty of them consume every day of float in the programme, and by the time a genuinely critical change arrives there is nothing left to absorb it.
This is why cumulative impact is so difficult to argue after the fact. Each change was agreed as neutral at the time, and the contractor is left demonstrating that a sequence of individually harmless events collectively caused delay.
Three habits reduce the exposure. Assess every change against the current schedule rather than the baseline, because float available in month two may be gone by month nine. Record the float consumed by each change even when no extension is claimed, which creates a contemporaneous record of where the contingency went. And track the approval clock separately from the work itself, since approval delay is frequently the larger effect and is often the owner's responsibility.
A change order process that protects the programme needs four things: a defined route from identification to instruction with time limits at each stage, a schedule impact assessment made against the live programme before agreement, visibility of which activities are affected and what float they hold, and a record of the approval timeline itself.
The obstacle is structural rather than procedural. Change orders live in a commercial system, the programme lives in scheduling software, and the field consequences live in conversations. Nobody is looking at all three, so the assessment gets made on judgement rather than on the network.
That connection is what Playbook is designed to hold. A pending change is linked to the activities it affects, so the team can see which trades are waiting, how much float is being consumed, and whether a milestone is exposed while the change is still being negotiated rather than after it is signed. The approval itself is tracked against the date the work needs it, which is the number that determines whether the delay was avoidable.
This is a scheduling and coordination question rather than a legal one. Entitlement under any particular contract is a matter for your commercial team and, where a dispute is live, for professional advice.
What is a construction change order?
A change order is a written amendment to the construction contract, agreed by owner and contractor, that changes the scope, the contract price, the time for completion, or a combination of these. Once executed it forms part of the contract.
What is the difference between a change order and a change directive?
A change order is agreed by both parties before the work proceeds. A construction change directive instructs the contractor to carry out the work while the price and time implications are still being settled.
How do you assess the schedule impact of a change order?
Assess three impacts against the live schedule: the duration of the added work, the approval period during which affected work cannot proceed, and the disruption caused by resequencing or remobilising trades. Then check whether the affected activities are on the critical path or hold float.
Why do small change orders cause delay when each one seems harmless?
Because float is a shared and finite resource. Each change may consume a few days that appear harmless in isolation, but once the accumulated total exhausts the float on a path, the next change delays completion directly.
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