Word file. No email, no signup. Yours to edit.
| Section | What it does |
|---|---|
| 1. Description of the change | Free-text lines for the change itself, plus a tick-box for the reason: owner request, concealed or unforeseen condition, code or inspector requirement, design change or drawing error, material substitution, or other. |
| 2. Cost of this change | An itemised table — description, quantity, unit price, amount — with rows for subtotal, overhead, profit, tax, and the net change to the contract price. Deductions go in as negative numbers. |
| 3. Effect on the contract sum | The running total: original contract sum, net change by previous change orders, the sum before this change, this change, and the new contract sum. Modelled on the structure of the standard AIA G701. |
| 4. Effect on the schedule | Calendar days added, the previous completion date, and the new substantial completion date. Write 0 if the change costs no time — never leave it blank. |
| 5. Terms | The change order amends the original contract and all other terms stand. Work does not begin until the owner signs, stated amounts include all associated costs, and any further scope change needs its own change order. |
| 6. Authorisation | Signature, print name, title, and date blocks for both the contractor and the owner. |
Verbal change orders are the most common way small contractors lose money. The pattern is always the same. The owner asks for something mid-job, you do the work, the invoice goes out, and the owner says they never agreed to it. Now you are arguing about memory instead of pointing at a signature.
A signed change order ends that argument before it starts. The terms on this form say it plainly: the contractor does not begin the changed work until the owner signs, and work performed without a signed change order risks non-approval. Print two copies, sign both, keep one.
The single most valuable line on this form is the schedule one. Every change order should state the days added, even when the answer is zero. Writing 0 costs you nothing. Leaving it blank is how a contractor ends up carrying liability for a delay someone else caused.
The second is the contract-sum running total. On a job with nine change orders, nobody remembers what the contract is worth any more, and that is where disputes start. Section 3 forces the arithmetic every time: original sum, previous changes, this change, new total. It follows the same structure as the standard AIA G701, so the numbers carry cleanly if the rest of your paperwork sits alongside AIA documents.
Extra work carries the same cost of doing business as the base contract. Overhead and profit apply to change-order work exactly as they do to the original scope, and the cost table has dedicated rows for subtotal, overhead, profit, and tax, so the markup sits in the open instead of buried in the line items.
Deductions work the same way. Enter credit items as negative numbers and the net change to the contract price comes out negative. The running total in Section 3 handles it in either direction.
A change order is a written amendment to a construction contract, signed after the original agreement, that changes the scope of work, the contract price, the schedule, or all three. Once both parties sign it, it becomes part of the contract with the same force as the original terms. This form records all three effects on two pages: what changed and why, what it costs, and what it does to the completion date.
Sometimes it is enforceable, but proving what was agreed is another matter, and that is exactly where small contractors lose money. The work gets done, the invoice arrives, and the owner says they never agreed to it. The terms on this form close that gap: the changed work does not begin until the owner signs. If someone asks you to start on a handshake, a two-page form takes ten minutes to fill in.
Both parties to the contract — the contractor and the owner, or the owner's authorised agent. This form has signature, printed name, title, and date blocks for each. If you are a subcontractor, your change order runs to the general contractor, since that is who your contract is with. On architect-administered jobs the contract may require the architect's sign-off too, so check your agreement.
Yes. Extra work carries the same cost of doing business as base contract work — supervision, insurance, warranty, office — so overhead and profit apply exactly as they do to the original scope. This form gives them their own labelled rows below the subtotal rather than hiding them in unit prices. One caution: some contracts cap the markup allowed on changes, so read yours before you price the work.
No. The contract-sum section is modelled on the running-total structure the G701 uses — original sum, previous changes, this change, new sum — so the numbers carry the same way. But this is a general template in Word, free to edit, not an AIA document. If your contract specifically requires the G701, use the G701; this form suits residential and light commercial work where no form is mandated.