The change order register: fields an owner should keep
The contractor keeps a change order log. The architect keeps one. The owner usually keeps a spreadsheet built from both, updated the week before the board meeting. The spreadsheet has a number, a short description, a price and a status. It answers the question of how much, and nothing else.
The questions that come up at closeout, in a dispute, or in front of a lender are different. Who caused it. When did the owner learn of it. Which fund paid. Was the markup right. Who changed the cause and when. Each of those needs a field, and each field needs to have been filled in at the time, not reconstructed later.
Identity and description
Every entry needs the contractor's PCO number and, once executed, the change order number. They are different sequences and both are needed, because the contractor's references use one and the pay application uses the other. Keep the contractor's title, and add a short owner description in plain words if the contractor's title is unhelpful.
Record the originating document: the RFI number, the bulletin, the owner letter, or the daily log entry. This is the trail back to the facts. Without it, the register says what was done and not why.
Cause and fund
The cause field is the single most valuable column in the register. Owner scope, design gap, unforeseen condition, coordination, or unclassified. It should be required, with unclassified as an explicit value rather than a blank, and it should be dated.
Next to cause, record the fund the change was paid from or proposed against: owner contingency, contractor contingency, an allowance, a GMP increase, or absorbed by the contractor. Cause and fund are related but not the same. An unforeseen condition might draw on a rock allowance first and owner contingency second. Record both.
The contractor's proposed cause
Keep a separate column for the cause the contractor proposed. When the two columns differ, the register shows a disagreement that may matter later. When they agree, the register shows that both sides understood the change the same way.
Amounts at each stage
A single amount column is not enough. Keep the contractor's original PCO amount, the owner's estimate if different, the negotiated amount, and the executed amount. Each with a date. The gap between the first and the last is the value of review, and it is worth knowing across the project.
Break the executed amount into direct cost, fee, general conditions, insurance and bond, where the contract allows markups on changes. An owner who records markup separately can check it against the contract rates and see whether markups are stacking across tiers.
Dates and states
Dates are the part spreadsheets lose. Keep the discovery date, the notice received date, the PCO received date, the date of each state change, and the executed date. Keep the schedule impact in days separately from the cost, because time claims are reviewed differently.
Status should be a dated history, not a single overwritten value. A change that went from PCO to under review to approved to executed should show all four dates. That history is how an owner answers questions about review time, notice compliance, and billing lag.
Who changed what
Every edit to cause, fund or amount should record who made it and when, with the previous value preserved. A register without an audit trail is an opinion about the project. A register with one is a record of it.
A fictional $26 million aquatic center shows why. At closeout the owner's board asks why owner contingency is exhausted. The register shows that twenty two changes were originally recorded as design gap and later changed to owner scope, all in a single week, by a staff member who has since left. Nobody knows why. With an audit trail the board can at least ask the right question. Without one the changes simply look like owner scope.
This is the register Costwitness keeps for the owner, separate from the contractor's log, with these fields required and every edit recorded. The fields are not complicated. The discipline of filling them in at the time is the hard part, and a register that insists on it helps.
What to do this month
- Compare your current change log against the fields above and list which ones are missing.
- For the missing fields, decide which can be back filled from PCO cover sheets and RFIs, and which will only be kept from now on.
- Require a cause and a fund on every new entry from the next pay application forward, with unclassified as an explicit value that is reported monthly.
Questions on this
Is the contractor's change order log in Procore not enough?
It is the contractor's record, with the contractor's causes and the contractor's dates. It is a useful source, and the owner should have access to it. But the owner's view of cause, fund and timeliness is often different, and the owner needs a place to record that view that the contractor does not control.
How many fields is too many?
If a field is never used to make a decision or answer a question, drop it. The fields above each answer a specific question that comes up on most projects. Beyond these, add fields only when you can name the question they will answer.
Should the register include rejected and withdrawn PCOs?
Yes. A withdrawn PCO is evidence of what the contractor tried to claim and did not. A pattern of withdrawn PCOs for coordination tells the owner something about how the contractor is managing its contingency. Keep them with a closed status and a reason.
In the product
Change order register, Contingency ledger, Monthly owner report. Free tool: Change Order Exposure.
Keep reading
Earlier: Markup on change orders: fee, general conditions and insurance. Later: Coordination changes and MEP clashes: which fund they belong to. All articles on change orders.
See the cause register on a project like yours.
Thirty minutes on a call. The change order register with causes, the audit trail, and the notice clock, on a fictional project.