How Do You Reduce The Need For Change Orders In Construction?
Change is a part of life. When you are associated with the construction business, it common practice that you will manage frequent change orders throughout the life of your projects. This is true, whether it is minor changes made to a certain task or the change requires an entire revision of the budget, schedule, material, and all other project specifications. However, it is crucial that all the changes made to the original scope of work must be documented to avoid future clashes between contractors and the project owners.
It is critical for accurate change order management to have an effective system in place as it will cut down project costs.
One thing that can help cut down on change orders is advanced planning for costs, schedule, and other design data. Meeting such goals require a unified source of accurate project data which includes software-based projections as well as manually created figures.
However, cutting the stress associated with managing change orders requires an effective construction project management software that can allow project managers and other staff to have better visibility. Having a systematic approach to projects can help facilitate the changes and improve the overall business performance.
What Types of Issues Lead to Change Orders?
When we talk about elimating change orders, it is more of a fantasy that most contractors tend to have. Though projects could be made to flow smooth at its initial stages, even the best-planned projects will with change orders when it comes to project progress.
Why so many change orders and why so often? Modifications to the original scope of the project may be discovered at construction site or unidentified issues with the existing design.
They can be the disagreements that happen between project owners and contractors or subcontractors due to design-related confusions. This may even involve any last-minute changes that happen due to inconsistent documents.
The other times, Change Orders may even happen due to change in laws for different states that might render changes in cost, scope, or other variables related to the project. Such issues are more common with projects that have multiple phases and tend to extend for a span of few years.
No matter how big or small, changes can be intimidating and could make the contractors feel helpless when trying to take control over the unexpected. It can be a sudden shortage of material or last-minute changes, every single thing related to the project directly affects the job cost. Whether it adds to the initial intention or any reduced work, change orders need a complete revision of schedules.
All in all, the most common reasons behind the change orders are the general uncertainty associated with construction projects, miscommunication, or even data management errors. Though the former type of change orders needs immediate rectification, the latter needs an approach that can help drive added visibility and overcome last-minute changes.
How Does Data Visibility Help Reduce Change Orders?
Every construction project involves changes – some are related to additional work while some are associated with contract-related amendments, but working on then requires added time, budget, and a lot more. However, the consistency in the project data could help establish a real-time connection between all the project stakeholders cutting down the chances of change.
Construction firms which tend to lean on a system that can help improve the communication for enhanced project visibility. This not only helps to avoid miscommunication but streamline the task of project management while improving coordination between teams. Also, companies that adopt these practices can get ahead of the need for excessive change orders while meeting revenue needs.
What Is The Key To Effective Change Order Management?
Dealing with Change Orders demands an agile approach to construction projects. However, this requires contractors to take control over various project modules such as scheduling and budgeting. Also, the teams who are assigned with field tasks should have access to real-time and original information to avoid any confusions that might hamper project performance.
Fortunately, most modern-day construction project management software assists in avoiding change requests. An effectively deployed construction software could help in improving communication and ensure transparency with business data leaving no room for ambiguity that might happen with the project.
Even though it may feel a bit consuming, moving along with a new construction management software is an easy process. Since most modern-day construction software are based on cloud platforms, they are well-suited for construction change order best practices. Also, working with these solutions could help lessen the impact of the change requests, and therefore, it is always a good time to switch to software like ProjectPro that eliminates the stress associated with change order management.
Looking for a complete construction accounting software that can help you reducing change orders in construction? Get ProjectPro, your companion to easy and effective change order management. For more information, ask our experts to help you with a quick demo!
