Stop 4 of 8 · Daily
Change orders
A photo and a voice note at 9.40 becomes a priced change order and a client letter before the crew touches it.
The change starts as a photo
Nine forty in the morning, the coordinator opens a wall on the Mar Vista addition, and the header is a four by rather than the beam on S2.0. There is a photo and a ninety second voice note before the framer has put the saw down. That photo is the beginning of a change order, and a change order is only worth money if it is written, priced and sent before the work happens.
The reason Luis has eaten a few of these is not laziness. It is that writing one properly takes forty minutes at a desk, and the desk is at the end of the day, and by then the crew has framed it.
What the document has to carry
| Part | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Description | What was found, what the plans showed, what we propose |
| Price | Lines from your book or a quote, overhead and profit on its own line |
| Time | Days added, and what stops until they approve |
[upload the site photos and paste the note from the field] Draft a change order for the Mar Vista addition using the change order clause from my contract in this Project. Describe what was found and what the plans showed, price it from the line items I list below, put overhead and profit on its own line, and add one line on the days this adds and what waits on the approval. List every number you had to assume. Do not produce a rate I did not give you.
The letter is a different document
The change order is the contract document. The letter is the one Luis's client reads on a phone in the middle of a work meeting. Same facts, different job: what happened, what we recommend, what it costs, what it does to the finish date, and what happens if they want a day to think.
Write the client letter for that change order. Four short paragraphs: what we found and where, what we recommend and why, what it costs and how many days it adds, and what happens if they want to think about it. Warm, plain, no legal tone. End with the date I need an answer by to keep the framer on site.
[paste the change order] Read this the way the homeowner will. Which sentence do they push back on, and what do they say. Then rewrite that one sentence so it is still true and easier to say yes to, and tell me what I should have in front of me when they call.