Change Orders: Why Approval Is Not the Same as Validation

Change orders are a normal part of construction.

Design evolves. Site conditions emerge. Owner requirements change. Existing infrastructure creates surprises. Work must sometimes proceed before every commercial detail can be resolved.

The presence of change is not necessarily evidence that a project is poorly managed.

The danger arises when an owner approves a change without a complete view of how it formed, whether it is adequately supported and what else it may affect.

A change order can be administratively complete while remaining operationally incomplete.

The change order arrives at the end of a longer story

By the time a change reaches the owner for approval, it has usually passed through several stages:

• A field condition or constraint emerges.
• Someone provides direction or makes a decision.
• Work proceeds, stops or is resequenced.
• Labour, material or equipment costs accumulate.
• Documentation is assembled.
• Pricing is submitted.
• The project team reviews the request.
• The owner receives a recommendation.

The formal change order is therefore not the beginning of the event. It is the commercial expression of an execution history that may have developed over days, weeks or months.

If the owner reviews only the final submission, it may see the price without fully seeing the pathway.

Why owners approve changes

Owners rarely approve changes casually. They approve them because projects must continue.

A delayed decision can hold up dependent work. A disputed change can affect relationships and progress. Internal teams have limited time. Project managers may be processing multiple changes while managing schedule, quality and stakeholder issues.

The practical question can quickly become:

Is there enough support to process this change and keep the project moving?

That is different from asking:

What conditions produced this change, how did they interact and what future exposure could follow?

The first question supports administration. The second supports intelligence.

Both matter.

The industry has a visibility problem

A 2026 study by Dodge Construction Network and Clearstory found that only about one-third of surveyed general and specialty contractors believed their change-order process functioned very well.

Among the surveyed general contractors, 96% reported that a lack of change-order visibility affected their ability to control project costs. Seventy-eight percent cited unanticipated costs as a major factor, while 60% cited late costs. The study also reported that incomplete documentation, disputed pricing and scope disagreements frequently contributed to reductions in the amounts paid.

The research concerned US commercial contractors rather than Canadian public owners, so it should not be treated as a direct measure of municipal or institutional-owner performance. It does, however, illustrate a broader problem: change processes often operate with incomplete, delayed or disconnected information. Dodge Construction Network and Clearstory study summary

A complete package can still be missing context

A typical change submission may contain:

• Description of the changed work
• Labour and material pricing
• Equipment costs
• Subcontractor quotations
• Markups
• Schedule-impact statements
• Supporting correspondence
• Relevant drawings or instructions

Those records help determine price and contractual support. But they may not reveal the full execution context.

For example:

• Was schedule float already declining before the change?
• Did a delayed decision create trade stacking?
• Was access constrained by unrelated work?
• Did an inspection or hold point affect the sequence?
• Was the work performed before authorization?
• Are several changes connected to the same underlying constraint?
• Has the same issue appeared elsewhere on the project?
• Could the change affect downstream quality, commissioning or handover?
• Does the documented cause align with the project history?

These questions cannot always be answered from the change order alone.

The evidence may exist—but in different places.

Fragmentation favours approval over understanding

The schedule may sit in one system. Site instructions may sit in another. Inspection records, meeting minutes, RFIs, daily reports, correspondence and cost information may all follow different workflows.

The project team must reconstruct the story manually.

Under schedule pressure, the review often narrows to what is immediately necessary:

• Is the work within or outside the original scope?
• Is the price reasonable?
• Is the documentation sufficient?
• Is funding available?
• Can approval keep the project moving?

Those are essential controls. But if the owner does not connect the change to the wider project model, it can miss the relationships that explain why the exposure formed.

That creates a recurring pattern: changes are evaluated individually even when their causes and consequences are connected.

Challenging a change does not mean rejecting it

"Challenge" can sound adversarial. That is not the objective.

A responsible challenge process tests the submission before the owner commits:

• What evidence supports the cause?
• What contractual event created the entitlement?
• When was the condition first visible?
• What notices or directions were issued?
• What alternatives were considered?
• How was the schedule impact calculated?
• Which activities and dependencies are affected?
• Does the requested amount align with the underlying records?
• Are there overlapping costs elsewhere?
• What continuing exposure remains after approval?

The result may still be full approval.

But the approval is then based on a clearer understanding of the event, the evidence and its wider consequences.

Change exposure forms before the change order

Owners often focus their commercial controls on submitted changes. By then, part of the exposure has already developed.

Earlier indicators may include:

• Repeated unresolved decisions
• Declining float around affected work
• Design information arriving out of sequence
• Access restrictions
• Incomplete inspection or assurance evidence
• Trade convergence
• Recurring requests for direction
• Work proceeding before formal authorization
• Meeting commitments that remain unresolved
• Multiple potential changes connected to one constraint

Individually, these may look manageable. Together, they can indicate that commercial exposure is accumulating.

The earlier the owner connects those signals, the more options remain available.

What stronger owner-side review looks like

A stronger change-review process does not require replacing project teams, consultants or existing systems.

It requires a consistent way to connect information across them.

For each material change, the owner should be able to see:

1. Origin: What condition, instruction or decision initiated the event?
2. Timeline: When did the relevant signals first appear?
3. Evidence: Which records support the stated cause and response?
4. Interaction: What other constraints or activities affected the event?
5. Propagation: Which downstream work could be affected?
6. Commercial position: What entitlement, notice and documentation issues exist?
7. Human judgment: Who reviewed the finding and what conclusion was reached?
8. Outcome: What happened after the owner acted?

This creates more than a defensible approval. It creates organizational learning.

From change administration to change intelligence

Most change-management systems are built to record, route, price and approve changes. Those functions are necessary.

Owners also need an intelligence layer that examines how commercial exposure is forming across project conditions before it becomes a formal claim or approved cost.

That is the purpose of ChangeGuard, a workflow built on Vantage Core. ChangeGuard is designed to connect project conditions, supporting records, schedule relationships and emerging commercial exposure so that owner teams can direct professional review toward the issues that matter.

It does not determine legal entitlement, replace contract administration or remove human judgment. It helps the owner see the evidence and relationships that a conventional change log may not reveal.

Because approval should be the conclusion of an informed review—not the first time the owner sees the full story.

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How confident are you that your current change process explains not only what changed, but how the exposure formed?

Vantage is speaking with Canadian public and private owners about their current change-review and project-oversight workflows. Speak with Vantage →