“Change orders only make matters worse.”

For an architect, there’s nothing worse than a construction company that responds to every obstacle on a project with a change order. The problem isn’t just that every change order presents a bureaucratic hassle with a price tag attached. Volleys of change orders create an adversarial atmosphere. The contractor who nickel-and-dimes his project partners makes life hard for everyone on the team.

Of course, change orders are sometimes perfectly appropriate. But they’re actually preventable much more often than you might imagine. All it takes is foresight based on thorough preparation and a sincere desire to be flexible and fair.

Do your homework, and look farther ahead.

The best tool for preventing change orders is a deep understanding of the project plans very early in the process. The farther ahead you can anticipate a problem, the more easily you can find an alternative.

Your plans aren’t perfect. That’s life.

Anyone who expects a set of project plans to be perfect is a dreamer. The real world doesn’t work that way. The key question is how you will react when you detect a component in the plan that doesn’t work. You can be inflexible and make yourself part of the problem. Or you can be the one who finds an intelligent solution, makes life easy for your architect-partner, and saves a little money for the owner.

Which will it be?

In times like these, creative solutions come easily to the contractor who knows his plans inside out and wants to be creative – instead of combative!

Joe Kish
Vice President - Operations
Employee Owner