Change Orders

Change Orders

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  Change Is in Order: Change Order Calculations Done in the Field vs. in the Office

  TIM FALLER: Should you ask your lead carpenter to estimate and present change orders?

   

• Know Your Lines: Building a Thorough Estimate

  Pre-construction preparation using a detailed line-item spreadsheet helps build a more accurate estimate and reduce the number of change orders.

   
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  The Fallacy of the Fast Track

  Tim Faller: There really is no such thing as a fast track. Skipping steps from planning to production can be costly.

   

• Painless Business Generation for Production Staff

  By leveraging the day-to-day contact your production staff have with homeowners, you can build trust, improve profits, and sail through change orders.

   

• Disarm difficult clients by maintaining control.

  What do you do when you have a client who is draining your business as well as your mental resources?

   

• Change orders converted into separate jobs

  Jeff Berkowitz, project coordinator at Lawrence Murr Remodeling, Jacksonville, Fla., and his team prefer to convert large change orders into separate jobs. This allows them to use the company's full process to develop the project. The "additional work authorization" offers several benefits.

   

• Communicating payment schedules

  A quick primer on the best practice of collecting monies owed.

   
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  Streamlining the remodeling process

  Getting clients to make design decisions well before building helps to streamline the remodeling process and cut down on change orders and schedule glitches. Now there's a Web-based system to help with this process: RemodelVision.

   

• Hardknocks: Trust-busters

  Hilliard Contracting, Raleigh, N.C., ran on trust and goodwill until late one Friday afternoon in 2002, the year the company became Big50. Owner Steven Hilliard had just met with a client whose whole-house remodel was about 75% complete. His purpose was to deliver the unfortunate news that their...

   
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  Profile: Halsey Platt

  To keep up with change orders and to address client issues, Halsey Platt asked his project managers to meet with clients every two weeks. These meetings address the bigger picture, beyond the day-to-day details covered in weekly meetings.