Outcomes Automation / Services / Change orders

Utility change orders, anchored to the purchase order they amend

A county splits a crossing, a landowner adds a gate condition, the engineer asks for two more parcel visits. Send what your agent sent you, in whatever form it came. The change order comes back on your client's form, priced from the rate sheet in force, reconciled to every earlier change on that purchase order, and signed by me before you see it.

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$150 per change order · First document free after set-up · Next-business-day target

What goes in, and what comes back

$150 per change order, flat

What you send

The field account, in whatever form it reached you: an email, typed notes, photos, a voice memo.
The purchase order or earlier change it amends.
The rate sheet in force, with its revision.

What comes back

The change order on your client's form, in Word and PDF.
Original and amended amounts side by side, task by task.
A written justification in the terms your client's paperwork uses.
The funding history: every earlier change on that purchase order, reconciled to the amended not-to-exceed.
The verification checklist, or a question first if a quantity or a rate cannot be pinned down.

A change order amends an approved scope or purchase order. New work with no parent document is priced as a scope, at $250. You approve and submit; I do not submit to your client.

A worked example: the fifth permit on WO#4417

A fictional project, carried on from the sample scope for WO#4417

The sample scope for WO#4417 carried four permit applications and named one condition for a fifth: if the county split the crossing at the road, a fifth application would be added at the same unit price under a documented change. Below is that change as it would ship. Every name and figure is fictional, and every number can be checked from the page.

Intake: land agent's voice memo, transcribed

Re: WO#4417, reg station power drop

County wants the road crossing on its own permit, separate from the conduit run. Same reviewer, same fee schedule, and they won't take it combined. Everything else on the job is unchanged.

Cascade Land Services LLC (a fictional firm, standing in for yours)

Prepared for: Granite Basin Power & Gas (fictional utility), Gas Engineering
Change order: CO-01 to WO#4417, Regulator station power drop
Amends: the purchase order issued against the approved WO#4417 scope
Requesting engineer: D. Reyes
Pricing basis: Rate sheet rev. C, still in force on the date of the change
Document type: Change order, not-to-exceed

Change Order CO-01

Regulator Station Power Drop: Fifth Permit Application

1. Reason for change

The approved scope for WO#4417 carried four permit applications on the requesting engineer's written confirmation and named one condition for a fifth: a county decision to split the crossing at the road (ISOW Section 4, approved assumption). The land agent reports that the county now requires the road crossing to be permitted on its own application, separate from the conduit run. This change adds that application at the P-101 unit price and changes no other task, quantity, or rate.

2. Change detail

Task	Item	Unit	Qty	Unit price	Extended
1. Permit application, road crossing, through issuance	P-101	each	1	$1,080.00	$1,080.00
Total of this change					$1,080.00

3. Original and amended amounts

Task	Item	Original	This change	Amended
1. Permit applications, four then five	P-101	$4,320.00	+$1,080.00	$5,400.00
2. Landowner coordination, town parcel	LC-210	$2,240.00	$0.00	$2,240.00
3. TUA, construction access and parking	TUA-301	$1,610.00	$0.00	$1,610.00
4a. Title review, affected parcel	TR-410	$1,850.00	$0.00	$1,850.00
4b. Field mileage, billed at actual miles	M-900	$290.00	$0.00	$290.00
Total, not to exceed		$10,310.00	+$1,080.00	$11,390.00

4. Funding history on this purchase order

Entry	Reference	Change	NTE after
Original scope, approved and funded	WO#4417	+$10,310.00	$10,310.00
Fifth permit application, road crossing	CO-01	+$1,080.00	$11,390.00
Amended not-to-exceed			$11,390.00

All unit prices from rate sheet revision C. Work is billed as performed and capped at the amended NTE. No task proceeds beyond its line amount without a documented change.

5. Assumptions and exclusions

Approved assumption. The fifth application was approved in advance as a condition of the original scope (ISOW Section 4); this change order is the documented change that condition called for.
Exclusion. Permit fees remain the utility's cost, invoiced at actuals with receipts, as in the original scope.
Unchanged. Mileage stays within the Task 4b line and is billed at actual miles.

Prepared by: Cascade Land Services LLC (fictional)

Utility engineering approval: ____________________

Audited ✓ Human-reviewed

Verification checklist attached to the change order as shipped

Line	Basis	Kind of evidence
Reason for change	Land agent's voice memo, transcribed, read against the condition written into ISOW Section 4.	Source fact
Quantity, one application	“County wants the road crossing on its own permit”: one crossing, one application.	Source fact
Unit price	P-101, rate sheet rev. C, $1,080.00 each; 1 × $1,080.00 = $1,080.00.	Rate basis
Amended NTE	$10,310.00 + $1,080.00 = $11,390.00, matching the CO-01 line in the funding history.	Rate basis
Parent document	Anchored to the purchase order issued against the approved WO#4417 scope.	Source fact
Human sign-off	Read against the memo, the approved scope, and the funding history before release.	Reviewer

The anchor line is the one to check first. A change order priced against the wrong parent can foot on every line and still be wrong: in production, the audit stopped one before release, and the corrected build differed by about $3,700. The case study has three more cases from the same production log.

Where change orders go wrong

The first three are from the production log

Priced against the wrong anchor: The arithmetic foots and the document is still wrong, because it amends the wrong scope or the wrong purchase-order change. The audit caught one of these before release; the two builds differed by about $3,700, and the corrected one was submitted.
No parent scope to amend: Legacy work that predates the current scope still needs an anchor. One such request was anchored to the purchase order itself, with the funding history written out line by line, and review followed the math without a phone call.
Marked ready to submit for about three weeks: A finished change order sat while everyone assumed someone else had sent it. A duplicate nearly got written. On the retainer, every document is now tracked from draft through your client's approval and purchase order.
A total nobody can trace: After several changes on one purchase order, it gets hard to say which total the client actually approved, so every change order here carries the full funding history.

What a change order costs, and how fast it comes back

The same terms as every other document

$150 per change order

Flat, with no hourly meter and no percentage of contract value. Under the pilot, the first live document after set-up is free.

Next-business-day target

Once the field account, the parent document, and the current rate sheet are in hand and your desk is set up. It is a target, not a guarantee, and if a change order will be late you hear it before the deadline.

Errors fixed at no charge

An error in a delivered change order is fixed free by the next business day. A changed requirement is a new change order at the flat rate.

On the retainer, change orders count toward the four documents a month, and each one after that is $115. Full terms are on the pricing section and the process page.

Free change order template, in Word

Same layout as the example above

If you would rather write change orders in-house, take the form. It has the header block, reason for change, change detail, original and amended amounts, funding history, assumptions and exclusions, and the approval line, with a short note in each section on what belongs there. Use it as is, add your letterhead, or copy the sections into your client's form.

Download the change order template (.docx) The matching scope of work template →

Change order questions

Is a work order the same as a change order?+

They are different documents. The work order, or the ISOW, task order, or work authorization behind it, sets the original scope and its not-to-exceed. A change order amends that scope after approval: more permits, another parcel, a new access condition. If nothing approved exists to amend, the work is priced as a new scope.

Should a change order amend the purchase order or the scope?+

It should point at whatever your client funded, which is usually the purchase order issued against the approved scope. Some clients anchor changes to the scope instead, and then the change order follows their form. Either way, the funding history lists every earlier change, so the new total can be checked against what was approved.

What does a not-to-exceed change order show?+

The original amount, the change, and the amended amount for each task, so a reviewer can see which line moved and why. Work stays billed as performed and capped at the amended not-to-exceed.

Is a voice memo enough to start?+

Yes. The memo becomes the written justification. Anything it leaves open, such as a count, a parcel, or which rate-sheet revision applies, comes back to you as a question before it is priced.

Do you send the change order to our client?+

No, your firm does. You review and approve it, then submit it yourself. On the retainer, its status is tracked through your client's approval, so nothing sits marked ready to submit.

Send the next field change and judge the change order

The pilot sets up your desk on your client's form, your current rate sheet, and twenty or more past documents, which takes about a week. Then your first live document, a scope or a change order, comes back free.

Start the free pilot

Read the sample scope · Or ask for a 15-minute call