Change Order

A change order is a formal amendment to the construction contract — it changes the scope of work, the contract price, the schedule, or some combination of the three. Unlike an RFI (a question) or a submittal (a proposal for approval), a change order actually modifies what was agreed to. Without one, work outside the original contract technically isn't authorized, whatever got said verbally on site.

Why change orders cause real problems when they're informal

A change gets agreed to verbally in the field, work proceeds, and the paperwork gets written up later — or doesn't. That gap is where disputes start: the GC says the change was authorized, the owner says they never approved that cost, and there's no real record settling it either way. The budget also drifts quietly, because a change that isn't formally logged doesn't update what the job is actually tracking against.

What a real change order process requires

Three things, done in order: the change proposed and priced, a real approval from whoever has authority to approve it, and the job's budget updated to reflect it — automatically, not as a separate manual step someone might forget. If a change order gets approved but the budget doesn't move, the job is now being tracked against numbers that don't reflect what was actually agreed.

How PoPs Suite handles it

A change order approved in PoPs Project Tracker updates the job's real budget automatically — no separate step to re-enter what changed. Change orders run through PoPs APM (Assistant Project Manager) alongside RFIs and submittals, so the same connected system tracks the question, the proposal, and the contract change together instead of three separate threads. For jobs with a Client Portal active, the client can review and approve a change order directly — and the GC can still pull it back if something needs to change, rather than losing control of an approval once it's sent. Change order dollar exposure also rolls up company-wide into PoPs Owner Dashboard so an owner can see how much is moving across every active job, not just one at a time.