Quote:
Originally Posted by kach22i
I seem to lose money on changes all the time, and so do many builders.
I recently asked a former employer about this and he gave me a few tips on how to manage this.
I cannot wait to try them out, should work better for both sides.
I've heard of one building outfit which will not make any changes. They build it exactly as drawn, and if you want it changed, you pay up front and they rip out the old work and rebuilt that part. Seems wasteful but prevents a lot of unnecessary changes from happening.
The 5,000 SF house I have going up in North Dakota had so many changes that I hardly recognized it. The building inspector was there and asked me for "As-Built" drawings which is unheard of in residential. They later backed down, the owner is an attorney and convinced the locals that the outside inspector/consultant didn't understand their ways.
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I had a store owner come in and ask for a new wall already built to be moved. I told him that the wall was on the plans and would have to be resubmitted. (That may not have really been true.) I asked him why it needed to be moved and why he didn't think of it before if he had any logical reason. His answer was that plans meant nothing to him. He needed to walk the job to know what he wanted.
He's not the only one.
A change order is a tough thing. First of all, the plans have to be complete, not vague in any way. As soon as an idea pops up about changing something, the change has to be identified as different than the original. The original spec is described and then the replacement spec is described along with the time required to achieve the change.
This is where some make their money. There is no credit for the original spec not being built but there is a charge for the new item. Now, if work has started on the original, then there will be a charge to remove it. This gets into double and triple billing. The original contract spells this all out so there is no dispute about the procedure for changes and how they will be billed.
Personally I hate changes unless something isn't really going to work. I have run into a few situations where that was the case plain and simple. I consider part of my job as a contractor to recognize these problems before it is necessary to start reworking something. Do it once and do it right.
Even if you have to do it differently.