Variation orders that actually get paid
Unpaid variations are rarely refused. They are lost, undated, unpriced or built before anyone agreed them. A checklist for making changes recoverable.
Contractors rarely lose variation money in a formal dispute. They lose it earlier, in the quiet moment when a client asks for something on a site walk, the foreman says fine, and the work is done before anyone writes it down.
Four conditions, all required
- 1Dated. The instruction has a date and an author. "Sometime in March, the architect said" is not a date.
- 2Described. What changed, in the same language as the BOQ. Not "extra work at the entrance".
- 3Priced. A rate and a quantity, ideally derived from the existing BOQ rates so the client recognises the basis.
- 4Acknowledged. Someone with authority saw the price before the work started. Email counts. Silence after a written notice sometimes counts, depending on your contract, and is worth knowing in advance.
The fourth condition is the one firms skip under schedule pressure, and it is the one that decides the argument.
Keep the chain, do not overwrite
The instinct is to edit the BOQ line to the new quantity. Do not. The moment you overwrite it, you have destroyed the evidence that the change happened at all, and your final account cannot explain why the total moved.
Keep the original line, attach a dated revision, and let the current value be derived. The line then reads as a history: originally 240 m2, revised to 310 m2 on 14 March under instruction AI-07, current value derived from both.
This is also what makes a final account fast. If every change is a dated link to an original line, the account assembles itself instead of being reconstructed.
The small ones cost the most
Large variations get paperwork because they are frightening. A week of extra blockwork here, a relocated socket there, a foundation dug deeper than drawn: individually too small to trigger the process, collectively the margin on the job.
Set the threshold at zero. Every change is recorded, with a fast path for small ones: photo, line, quantity, done in under a minute on the phone. A process only site staff can complete at a desk is a process that captures nothing.
What to have ready before you claim
- The dated instruction, in whatever form it arrived, attached to the variation.
- The affected BOQ line and the rate basis used for the new work.
- Site evidence: photos and daily logs from the days the work was done.
- Any labour and material actually consumed, if you are claiming on cost rather than rate.
- The acknowledgement, or the record of notice given and the response period elapsed.
Assembling that list from a shared drive takes a day per claim. Assembling it from a system where the variation, the log and the photos are already attached to the line takes a click, and the claim goes out while the client still remembers asking.
Questions this raises
What if the client refuses to sign before work starts?+
Record the instruction, price it, issue written notice that you consider it a variation, and keep the site evidence. That converts a verbal instruction into a documented position even without a signature.
Should variations change the original contract sum in our reports?+
Show both. Original contract sum and approved variations as separate lines, with the current sum derived. Merging them hides how much of the project is change.