Change orders, from a revision that lands mid-job to the answer your team sends back.

Two bodies of rules, one question. On a building job, changes run through the changes article of the general conditions and end on a signed form. AIA's G701-2017 Change Order carries signature lines for the owner, the architect and the contractor, and AIA describes executing a completed one as agreement on all the terms of the change, including any change in the contract sum, or guaranteed maximum price, and in contract time. Subcontract forms differ, but the lesson runs down the chain: time, exclusions and any reservation belong in the request, because the signature closes them. A molder or an EMS shop sells goods, so a change there usually modifies a purchase order under Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code. Section 2-209 says such a modification needs no consideration to bind, so nothing in the code makes a design change bring a price change with it; if the price should move, your answer has to say so. A signed agreement can require every change to be made in a signed writing, and between two merchants that clause holds even in one side's printed terms, with no separate signature. A change that misses those rules can still work as a waiver.

Where the procedure is written. In a building project manual, change procedures sit in Division 01, Section 01 26 00, Contract Modification Procedures, and each owner fills it in its own way. Yale's facilities procedure manual, dated July 2025, allows ten days after a proposal request to return a Notice of Change listing products added or removed with unit costs, taxes, delivery charges, equipment rental, trade discounts, labor and supervision, plus a time impact analysis. It then gathers the owner-signed proposed change orders through the twentieth of each month into one change order, ahead of the next application for payment. Another owner names other forms and other clocks. On manufacturing work the same rules live in the customer's PO terms, quality agreement or change notice. So the success criteria use the procedure in your own contracts, and every draft names the clause it followed.

The day a change arrives starts the clock. The federal government's standard clauses show how much rides on dates. FAR 52.243-4, the changes clause for construction, treats a direction, instruction, interpretation or determination from the contracting officer, written or oral, as a change order once the contractor gives written notice. It generally allows nothing for costs incurred more than 20 days before that notice, unless the specifications were defective, and asks for the right to an adjustment to be asserted within 30 days of a written change order. FAR 52.243-1, the fixed-price clause for supplies, lets the contracting officer change drawings, designs or specifications when the supplies are specially manufactured, with the same 30 days. Commercial contracts set their own clocks. Either way, the first line of every draft is the date the change reached you, taken from the email or transmittal, beside the deadline your contract sets.

Who caused the change. Construction has had an answer for design errors since 1918: in United States v. Spearin, the Supreme Court held that a contractor bound to build to plans and specifications the owner prepared is not responsible for the consequences of defects in them. A build-to-print shop meets the same question under its customer's terms. So every draft names the document behind each change, whether a reissued sheet, an RFI answer, a new BOM letter or a customer's change note, and keeps changes that started on your own side apart. It never decides who is liable or what is owed, and it never sends a change order. Your reviewer, the person who knows your changes best, scores each draft against what your team sent and what came back.

What changes by industry. An electrical contractor prices labor from its units and credits deletions. A steel fabricator follows each piece from approval drawing to shipping. An EMS shop sorts work in progress, stock and open POs by effectivity, and a molder splits its answer between the toolmaker's steel work and its own trial and piece price. Defense and aerospace programs stay out of every manufacturing test. Open a card for that industry's list of documents, its scoring rows and the one thing its test never touches.