Change orders: when the job grows

A change order is the document that lets an estimate survive contact with the actual job. Everything the estimate excluded, everything nobody could see until the work started, arrives here — and the whole question is whether it arrives as a decision the client makes, or as a number they discover at the bottom of the bill.

Raise it the day it appears

The cost of raising extra work goes up every hour you wait, and it is not a money cost. On the day, it is a fact about the job: the joist is rotten, here is what replacing it takes. A week later it is a story about why you did not mention it sooner, and by the invoice it is a dispute, because the client's only remaining move is to argue about whether it was needed.

What a change order has to say

  • What changed, in the client's language rather than the trade's.
  • Why it is outside the original scope — ideally quoting the exclusion that already said so.
  • What it costs, priced the same way the estimate was.
  • What it does to the schedule, which clients often care about more than the money.
  • That it needs their agreement before the work happens.

The second line is where a written estimate pays for itself. "This is the framing repair the estimate excluded" is a sentence that ends the conversation; without that exclusion in writing, the same work is something the client thought they had already paid for.

Keep it as its own document

  1. Do not edit the original

    The client has a copy of what they agreed to. A revised version with the same number and a different total is the fastest way to lose the argument you are trying to avoid.

  2. Issue it as a small estimate of its own

    Same shape, same rates, its own number. Then agreeing to it is one action, and the record shows what was agreed and when.

  3. Bill it as its own line

    On the invoice it should be recognisable as the thing they said yes to on the day, not folded into a bigger line where it looks like a price rise.

The sample documents for each trade show how the exclusions are worded in practice, which is where most change orders are won or lost.

Estimate the extra work

Common questions

What if the client is not reachable and the work cannot wait?
Do the minimum that stops the situation getting worse, record what you did and why with photographs, and reach them before doing the rest. Emergency work is defensible; the whole extra job done unilaterally is not.
Does a change order need a signature?
It needs agreement you can point at, which a signature is only one form of. A recorded acceptance against the document does the same job and is far easier to get on a Tuesday morning.
How do I price extra work mid-job?
At the rate the estimate named for exactly this, if it named one. That is why stating it up front is worth the sentence: pricing extra work while standing in the client's kitchen is the worst moment to invent a number.

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