Unsigned change order recovery: getting paid for extras

Most subcontractors lose more money to unsigned change orders than to bad estimating. The estimate you can sharpen. The extra you did on a verbal instruction, never priced, never signed, and now buried under three weeks of other work, is money you already spent and may never see. It is the quietest way a profitable job turns into a break-even one.

The good news is that unsigned does not mean unrecoverable. The contract almost always gives you a route to get paid for directed work. What closes that route is a missing paper trail, not the missing signature. We learned this the hard way running Quality Gypsum Services, a commercial drywall contractor in Calgary, Alberta, before we built the system that stopped it happening. Here is how to recover what you are owed and stop the leak.

Why unsigned extras pile up

Nobody sets out to do free work. Unsigned change orders accumulate for structural reasons, and knowing them is half the fix.

The direction comes verbally. A superintendent points at a wall and says "we need this moved," your foreman does it, and the paperwork is an afterthought that never happens. The change is small individually. Twenty hours here, a few hundred in material there, none of it feels worth stopping the job over, until you add up forty of them at year end. And the person who witnessed the direction, your foreman, is not the person who writes change orders, so the knowledge never reaches the office while it is still fresh.

The result is a stack of work you performed with no priced, submitted, signed document behind it. That stack is your recovery list.

Build the recovery list first

Before you can chase anything you need to know what you are chasing. Go job by job through the last few months and reconstruct every instance of directed work that was not part of your original scope. Your best sources are the ones that were captured in the moment: daily logs, jobsite photos, text messages, and your own labour hours coded to work that does not match the estimate.

That last one is the tell. If your job costing shows hours on a cost code that was not in the bid, or a code running well past its estimate with no scope change on paper, that is very often an unsigned extra hiding as a cost overrun. Costing and change orders are the same conversation from two directions.

For each item, capture five things:

An item with all five is a claim. An item missing the evidence or the name is a hope. The difference is what gets paid.

Price it from your own numbers

Recovery falls apart when the pricing looks invented. If you go back three weeks later with a round number and no backup, you have handed the other side a reason to negotiate you down or refuse outright.

Price each extra the same way you price a bid: your burdened labour rate times the hours your crew actually clocked, plus material at cost plus your markup, plus the equipment and the overhead the contract allows. When the number is built from documented hours at a rate you can defend, the conversation shifts from "is this real" to "how do we process it." That is the conversation you want.

Know what the contract actually gives you

Directed work is not a favour, it is a change to the contract, and the standard construction contracts have a mechanism for exactly this situation. It is worth reading how they handle it: CCDC 16, the Guide to Changes in the Contract, lays out the difference between a change order, a change directive, and the process for valuing directed work when the price is not agreed up front.

The key point for recovery: a change directive lets the owner or general contractor tell you to proceed before the price is settled, and it obliges them to pay the reasonable cost of that work. So "we never agreed a price" is not the same as "you do not get paid." It means the valuation follows the rules in the contract. Your job is to have the documented cost ready when that valuation happens. None of this is legal advice, and how your specific contract is written can change the route, so read your own change and payment clauses before you rely on any of it.

Submit, then chase to signature

A priced extra sitting in your office recovers nothing. Submit each one formally, in writing, referencing the direction and the date, with the evidence attached. Then treat it like an open receivable, because that is what it is.

The chase is where most recovery dies. An extra gets submitted, nobody signs, and it drifts. What works is a single view of every submitted change order and its status: submitted, under review, disputed, approved. You want to be able to say, in a draw meeting, "here are the eleven changes outstanding, here is the total, and here is the paper on each one." That is a very different meeting from arriving with a vague sense that you are owed something.

A system built around change order management from the sub's side does exactly this: it keeps the direction, the dated photo, the priced amount, and the status together, and it tells you which ones have gone quiet so you can push them before they age out.

Stop creating new ones

Recovery is triage. The cure is capturing the change the day it happens, so the word "unsigned" describes a status you are actively chasing, not a surprise you find at year end.

That means giving the field a way to log an extra in under a minute, from a phone, at the moment of direction: a photo, the name of whoever gave the instruction, and a one-line description, tagged to the job. The office prices it and submits it the same week, while the superintendent still remembers the conversation. Fresh change orders get signed. Stale ones get argued.

The two habits that end the leak:

• Every foreman logs directed work the moment it is directed, with a photo and a name, not at the end of the week.
• The office prices and submits inside seven days, before the memory and the goodwill fade.

Dated field evidence is what makes both stick. The site photos and daily logs your crew is already capturing are your proof, as long as they are tied to the job and the date automatically instead of living in a phone's camera roll.

You can see how the field capture, the pricing, and the chase fit together in our construction management features.

SubTrade starts at $299/month CAD with a 14-day free trial and no credit card required, so you can run your open extras through it and see the total you are actually owed.

FAQ

Can I get paid for a change order that was never signed?

Often yes. Under the standard construction contracts, directed work through a change directive obliges the payer to cover the reasonable cost even when the price was not agreed in advance. What stops recovery is a missing paper trail, not a missing signature, so documented evidence is what gets you paid.

How do I recover unsigned change orders on a past job?

Reconstruct each instance of directed work from your daily logs, photos, messages, and labour hours, capture who directed it and when, price it from your own rates, then submit each one formally with the evidence attached and chase it to signature.

What proof do I need for an unsigned extra?

The date, the name of the person who directed the work, a clear description of the scope, your documented hours and material, and dated evidence such as a photo or log entry. An item with all of these is a claim you can defend.

What is the difference between a change order and a change directive?

A change order is agreed and priced before the work proceeds. A change directive tells you to proceed before the price is settled and obliges the payer to cover the reasonable cost. Directed work with no agreed price usually falls under the second.

How do I stop losing money on unsigned change orders?

Capture every directed change the day it happens with a photo and the name of who directed it, then price and submit it within seven days. Fresh, documented change orders get signed. Stale ones get disputed. They also show up in your job costing as hours on a code that was not in the bid, which is often an unsigned extra hiding as a cost overrun.