How to Manage Change Like a Pro
Turn change from a risk into an opportunity to stand out.
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Today’s Overview:
Project change is a given. It's not a matter of if it will happen, but when. If you know that, you make a plan on how to deal with change, right? I didn’t on one of my first projects, and it nearly cost me my job…
A change request is a formal proposal to modify the initial project plan, potentially impacting scope, budget, resources, timelines, terms, or quality standards. These adjustments can emerge from various levels, including owners, contractors, or subcontractors, and stem from diverse reasons.
A change management plan sounds like a pile of paperwork. But trust me, it’s not, and it’s worth the effort. Completing a change order correctly minimizes risk, improves the chances of approval, and helps contractors get paid faster. Join me as I unpack my lessons learned and guide you through managing project changes like a pro.
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How to Manage Change Like a Pro
Filed under: Frameworks & Tools, Project Management
Just like the seasons inevitably turn, project change is a given.
It's not a matter of if it will happen, but when.
If you know that, you make a plan on how to deal with change, right?
I didn’t on one of my first projects, and it nearly cost me my job…
It’s a classic story of a young and hungry guy who is trying to impress the boss with one of his first big projects.
Early in my career, I was overseeing a significant healthcare facility project. I was confident, maybe overly so.
As the project progressed, change requests began trickling in. In my eagerness to please the client and assert my capability, I accepted and implemented changes without a formal review or tracking system.
It seemed manageable at first. However, as the project neared its end, I faced a startling revelation.
Numerous change orders had accumulated, many slipping through the cracks of my informal tracking system. This oversight led to a significant budget overrun and a client who was far from pleased.
Reflecting on this experience, I identified two fundamental issues:
A People Problem: There was a lack of clarity regarding roles, behavior, and responsibilities in handling changes.
A System Problem: The absence of effective tools and a defined process for managing change requests was evident.
Despite these challenges, we managed to deliver a successful project. But this experience underscored the importance of a systematic approach to change management in construction projects.
This article aims to share valuable insights and strategies I've developed since that experience. You'll learn how to effectively manage change requests, understand the roles and responsibilities involved, and implement a robust system to ensure project success.
Join me as I unpack the lessons learned and guide you through managing project changes like a pro.
What is a Change Request?
You’ve initiated your project, got everything planned out, and head down into execution. And then, something pops up. There are different kinds of change that we’ll cover soon. But let’s set the definition first:
A change request is a formal proposal to modify the initial project plan, potentially impacting scope, budget, resources, timelines, or quality standards. These adjustments can emerge from various levels, including owners, contractors, or subcontractors, and stem from diverse reasons.
Change requests can arise due to client demands, team insights, unexpected external factors, or the recognition of overlooked requirements.
Completing a change order correctly minimizes risk, improves the chances of approval, and helps contractors get paid faster.
Not All Change is Created Equal
Change is multifaceted, and understanding its different forms is key to effective management.
There are 4 broad categories of change:
Strategic Change: This involves significant shifts in project or organizational direction, often necessitating major alterations to your project plan. For instance, a company-wide reorganization could lead to a reevaluation of project objectives or resources.
Anticipated Change: These are changes you foresee and plan for, overlapping with risk management. An example could be a delay in the launch of a new piece of equipment or technology that you had already factored into your project timeline.
Reactive Change: Triggered by unforeseen events, reactive changes require you to adapt your plan without complete overhaul. An example might be the sudden departure of a key project member.
Incremental Change: Often linked with scope creep, this type of change involves gradual, often minor adjustments that collectively can have a significant impact. For instance, continuous small additions or alterations to project scope could lead to major shifts over time.
In any case, change management starts with change identification. Sounds obvious, but change can often infiltrate a project unnoticed.
And that’s why you should make a change management plan.
Your Change Management Plan
“Amateurs fumble change orders, Professionals streamline them.” - Kyle Nitchen
A change management plan sounds like a pile of paperwork. But trust me, it’s not, and it’s worth the effort.
It involves thinking through how you’ll deal with change when it hits, and can often be re-used for future projects.
A change management plan ensures that you answer the most important questions that you also answered when you planned your project:
Who
What
Why
When
Where
How
Let’s walk through each step 1 by 1.
Step 1: Review Roles & Responsibilities
Effective change management starts with clear roles and responsibilities:
Requesting a Change: Determine who is authorized to propose changes. This could be certain team members or client representatives.
Evaluating Change Requests: Decide who will assess and review the change requests. Typically, this includes the project manager along with key team members.
Authorizing Changes: Identify who has the final say in approving changes. Often, this is the client or a designated authority.
Timelines for Communication: Set specific time frames for notifying relevant parties about a change and for reviewing and submitting change requests.
In most instances, the construction contract dictates the change order process. The contract will provide specific guidelines on how to manage and process the change order.
Treat the contract as your change management playbook, ensuring your change management strategy aligns with its stipulations.
Step 2: Standardize Change Requests
To streamline the change request process:
Utilize a Standard Form: Implement a standard form for all change requests. This approach helps filter out non-essential requests and ensures you receive all necessary information for evaluation.
Incorporate Technology: Consider using change management software like TracFlo. This tool simplifies tracking, approving, and managing project change orders, offering time and cost savings.
Key Form Elements: Your form should make sure that a requester explains:
Who is requesting the change.
What the expected impact is of the change.
Why this change is being requested.
Photos & Visuals when relevant to support the explaination.
By standardizing change requests, you facilitate a more efficient and effective evaluation process, ensuring that only relevant and well-justified changes are considered.
Step 3: Evaluate Incoming Changes
When you get a change, you’ll need to assess the impact and make a recommendation whether to accept it or not.
You’ll need to review for two critical pieces:
Entitlement: Determine if the change is justified.
Equability: Verify if the change is fair, accurate, and reasonable.
In projects, you have 4 variables:
Time
Scope
Quality
Budget
A change always has primary impact on one of those variables. But if you touch one, you touch all 4. They’re all connected. Think through the consequences of accepting the change.
Based on that, advise your client clearly on whether to accept the change, outlining its effects, like a potential delay or cost increase. Frame your advice with specific conditions for implementation to guide the client's decision.
“Business critical, 2-week delay, $1M extra contract value. I suggest we do it, but under the condition of X, Y, and Z.”
That’s the conversation you want to have with your clients.
Step 4: Submit Vetted Change Orders
The contract may spell out the specific change order form a contractor should use, and how to submit it.
What’s most important is that it contains the key pieces of information that can help a property owner or architect approve the change.
Here are (6) things every change order should include:
Project and Contact Information: Identifies the project and relevant contacts.
Dates of Change Events: Specifies when the change occurred or will occur.
Details of the Work:
The Who: Lists who is affected or involved in the change.
The What: Describes the work involved in the change (Including photos and visuals).
The Why: The actual reason triggering the change and why the change is necessary.
Updated Schedule
Cost of the Change
Updated Contract Value: The original contract value, the cumulative value of past approved change orders, and the cost of the current change order.
Step 5: Build a Change Log
A change log is a document where you track all change requests. You mark them as accepted or rejected, and summarize what the impact of the decision is.
A change log will help you keep track of the overall project, as many small changes add up to big deviations.
Incorporating the right technology into your management plan enhances these benefits. Advanced project leaders use Universal Change Logs, allowing team-wide access to the financial records and ensuring seamless project closeouts.
For more efficiency, consider TracFlo's real-time change order cost tracking, which can make your change log even more effective in managing project alterations.
"Tracflo eliminates the potential for lost paper tickets. Keeps track of work in real-time. The system stores labor rates which allows for quick ticket markups. View status of all tickets with a click of a button. Tickets presented in a nice format. Program is user friendly. The Customer Service at Tracflo is phenomenal! Always able to assist and takes our system improvement ideas seriously. The team will meet you ONSITE to set you up on Tracflo. TRACFLO IS A GAME CHANGER." - Samantha from Island Companies
Step 6: Communicate Your Changes
This sounds obvious, but gets missed often. If you accept changes, tell your team and your stakeholders about it.
Tell them what change you’ve accepted and what the impact is. Then explain how you’ll deal with the change and what parts of the initial plan are adjusted.
Project management is communication. Make the implicit explicit, and manage expectations. And above all: check if you were understood.
Step 7: Implement and Control the Change
Once you’ve approved and communicated the change, you’ll need to make sure it gets done.
Put checks in place when you accept the changes, and mark them as done in your change log when the change is implemented.
Communicate to the stakeholders and the person who requested the change that you’re done, and move on with implementation.
TracFlo simplifies this process, easing administrative burdens:
Digital Approvals: Manage change events digitally, with mobile app support for signatures and transparent cost tracking using pre-approved rates.
Effective Communication: Use 'ball-in-court' assignments for clear stakeholder accountability, enhancing efficiency in project meetings.
Centralized Dashboard: Organize and access project data easily, sorting by various criteria for quick information retrieval.
This technology allows your team to shift focus from administrative tasks to strategic project leadership.
Final Thoughts
I know what you’re thinking: this sounds like work.
And you’re right. It is work. But in practice:
90% is the same for every project you do
In smaller projects, most steps involve the same people
Authorizing changes by the stakeholders can be batched or even sent as email. Not nearly as formal or cumbersome as it sounds.
Controlling change, risk, and stakeholders are the differentiators between administrative project managers and strategic project leaders.
Build a process, follow it, and turn change from a risk into an opportunity to stand out.
If you’re interested in gaining these benefits and closing unpaid tickets and change orders on your next project, reach out to the TracFlo team today for a quick demo on how easy it is to get started.
Until next week,
Kyle Nitchen
Thanks for reading! Want to work together?
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