Standards
Change Order Standard
Operational control of changes to approved project scope — not a generic contract-policy document. Every change must be described, its impact assessed, approved, and traceable before affected work proceeds.
- Owner
- Project Manager
- Governs
- Requirements for requesting, evaluating, approving, and documenting changes to approved project scope, from Contract through Closeout.
- Applies to
Requirements
Each requirement must eventually be verifiable — not policy prose.
Every change request must clearly identify what is being added, removed, modified, or substituted relative to the currently approved scope.
Every change request must record its reason or origin — e.g. customer request, site condition, design or equipment availability, code/compliance requirement, technical discovery, IETEL correction, or other.
Where applicable, the change must state its impact to scope, labor, materials, subcontractor cost, project price, schedule, and technical design.
A change affecting contractual scope, price, or schedule must have the required approval recorded before affected work proceeds, except where a documented emergency exception applies.
Every Change Order must remain linked to its Project, and eventually to the specific affected scope or work item.
Installation Documentation must be able to indicate that specific work was performed under an approved Change Order.
- Future system rule
Work matching a change in scope cannot be marked complete without a linked, approved Change Order.
Compliance measurement
Change orders with work performed before formal approval was recorded ÷ total change orders — should approach zero outside documented emergency exceptions.
Required data
- Change order value
- Work start date
- Approval date
- Reason/origin category
- Schedule impact
Exceptions
- Approver
- Operations Manager
- Reason required
- A recorded justification for why work proceeded before formal Change Order approval — e.g. a genuine emergency where delay posed a safety or property risk.
- Evidence required
- Who authorized proceeding, why work proceeded, what was changed, and the date formal approval was subsequently completed.