Change control that people actually follow

The theory of change control is uncontroversial. Somebody identifies a change, it is priced, it is approved, it is instructed, it is executed, it is valued. Six steps, in order.

What happens in practice is that the change is identified on Tuesday, the work is needed on Wednesday, and steps two through four take a fortnight. So the work proceeds and the paperwork follows, sometimes.

Why procedures get abandoned

Not through carelessness. They are abandoned because the site operates on a faster clock than the approval process, and when the two conflict the site wins every time.

A procedure requiring three signatures and a cost plan update before an instruction can issue will be bypassed for anything urgent, which on a live job is most things.

What a workable one looks like

• One register, one number sequence. Every potential change gets a number the day it is raised, before anybody knows what it costs or whether it will proceed.
• A cost band, not a cost. On day one the answer is under five thousand, five to twenty, or over twenty. That is enough to decide who approves it.
• Approval thresholds. Small changes approved by the surveyor, medium by the project manager, large by the client. Most changes are small.
• An instruction, always. Whatever the value, whatever the urgency, something written goes out.

The urgent case, handled honestly

Some changes cannot wait for pricing. The correct answer is not to pretend they can, but to instruct on a defined basis: proceed on daywork, or proceed with cost to be agreed, with a stated cap.

That is a decision taken deliberately, with the exposure known. It is a very different thing from work proceeding with nothing recorded at all.

The monthly reconciliation

Once a month, three questions. Is every instruction on the register? Does every instruction with a cost effect have a variation? Does every variation have an instruction?

Ten minutes, and it catches the two failures that matter: work done without authority, and authority given without anybody pricing it.

Why it is worth the discipline

A final account assembled from a register maintained during the job takes days. One assembled from correspondence at the end takes months, and produces a figure both sides argue about, because it was reconstructed rather than recorded.