{"id":389,"date":"2010-11-28T19:14:16","date_gmt":"2010-11-29T02:14:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.constructonomics.com\/blog\/?p=389"},"modified":"2010-11-28T19:14:16","modified_gmt":"2010-11-29T02:14:16","slug":"what-to-do-with-all-these-change-orders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/28\/what-to-do-with-all-these-change-orders\/","title":{"rendered":"What To Do With All These Change Orders"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"changeIt’s hard to describe how owners feel about change orders.\u00a0 Sometimes I think they would rather be forced to eat a bucket full of glass or perhaps permantly lose feeling in all extremities before accepting a change order that increases their project cost by .01%.\u00a0 Why is this? \u00a0Change orders are a part of the construction process, and any semi-experienced building owner should expect a reasonable amount of change orders and budget for them.\u00a0 After all, you can’t expect an architect to cover every little detail and you certainly can’t expect a contractor to start anticipating what may or may not be required for the project in their bid.\u00a0 However, they do.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The problem is that owners don’t budget for potential cost overruns and they expect their illustrious owner’s representatives to bring their project in at the exact amount bid.\u00a0 Of course, this is impossible.\u00a0 So what do owner reps do?\u00a0<\/p>\n

They manipulate the contractor –\u00a0like the filthy little scoundrels that they are.\u00a0 They\u00a0manipulate the contractor into delivering the project and leaving as many unresolved\u00a0change orders as possible.\u00a0 They\u00a0may say things like, “We just gotta get this thing done”, or “You’ve got my word that we’ll work this thing out.”\u00a0 Then when you give them the project and they no longer have a need for you they attempt to settle for pennies on the dollar.\u00a0\u00a0At times, this business is cruel and ugly.<\/p>\n

So suppose you are a contractor and you’re nearly at\u00a0the end of the project and an owner is giving you\u00a0the run-around on change orders.\u00a0 What should you do?\u00a0 Well, in the current construction market where the survival of your company depends on payment of change orders, unfortunately, you have to get dirty, nasty, and downright unprofessional.\u00a0 You have to hold their project hostage like a bank robber would with an expecting mother.\u00a0 I know it sucks, but this is the world we live in at the moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But what about credibility, and the warm and fuzzies you want to leave with your client?\u00a0 In about five years when the economy turns around, maybe we’ll be singing Kumbaya again, but for now, F it.\u00a0\u00a0At the moment, it’s the quality of\u00a0the project you provide and\u00a0the\u00a0survival of the company that matters most.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s hard to describe how owners feel about change orders.\u00a0 Sometimes I think they would rather be forced to eat a bucket full of glass or perhaps permantly lose feeling in all extremities before accepting a change order that increases their project cost by .01%.\u00a0 Why is this? \u00a0Change orders are a part of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":397,"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389\/revisions\/397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}