I was in a preconstruction meeting on a job I’ll leave unnamed, and the team kept circling back to a question the owner had already answered. Finally the owner stopped the room. He said, more or less, “We have spent $2,500 on this conversation. We’ve already decided. Let’s move on.”
He was right, and he wasn’t talking about ductwork. He was talking about what it costs to have all those people sitting at one table. Talking costs money. Paperwork costs money. A change order is both.
I worked the tinner trade for about four years and I haven’t taken a side job in fifteen. I’ve been in construction about 23 years, and now I manage projects for a general contractor in Salt Lake. I review subcontractor change orders every week, and I write the agreed labor, material and equipment unit rates into our contracts.
The numbers here are Salt Lake in 2026, and they’re my examples, not a price list and not an industry average. Swap in your own. The examples are ductwork because that’s my trade, but the math works for any sub who has to write up a change. This post is about what it costs to produce and process a change order. For how to price the extra itself, see how to price an HVAC change order.
How much does a change order cost?
Often more than the work in it. On the subcontractor side, I use about $400 as my example minimum just to produce a change. It would go something like; look at it, get it to the office, and get it written up and sent. On the GC, owner and architect side, my rough estimate is about $2,500 or more to get a change reviewed, priced, approved and processed. Also known as the time value of money. That second number swings a lot by job, owner and contract. Neither one includes the work itself.
So before you write one, ask the question: does the cost to generate this change outweigh the benefit?
What does it cost a sub to write a change order?
Every change starts with somebody identifying an issue in the field or on the drawings. Then somebody has to tell the office. Then somebody in the office has to write it up and send it. That’s three hours before anybody touches a piece of duct.
I worked out the $85 burdened rate in what an hour actually costs you. It’s not a paycheck. It’s what an hour costs once everything that rides along with it is loaded in.
Worked example: the $400 template
This is how I build the $400. Use it as a template, not a quote.
| Line | My example | Your number |
|---|---|---|
| Field time, looking at it or pricing it | 1 hr at $85 = $85 | |
| Communicating it to the office | 1 hr at $85 = $85 | |
| Office time documenting it | 1 hr at $85 = $85 | |
| Labor subtotal | $255 | |
| Overhead: travel, electronics and software, tax, markup | the rest, about $145 | |
| Minimum to produce one change order | about $400 |
Now redo it with your numbers. Your burdened rate might be higher or lower. Your foreman might price it on the spot, or your office might take longer to write it up. The job might be across town. Whatever it comes out to, that’s your floor for paperwork. It’s the same idea as the floor for a job in how to price an HVAC change order, just applied to a document.
And that’s the minimum. It assumes one look, one conversation and one write-up. It rarely goes that smooth.
What happens after a change order leaves your office?
This is the part subs don’t see. When your change order lands on my desk, it doesn’t go straight to a check. A lot of people touch it:
- The GC’s project manager, which is me
- The project engineer, I have them review the values against historical data
- The superintendent, who confirms what happened in the field
- The architect or engineer, if it touches the design
- The owner’s rep
- Accounting, once it’s approved
Each of them reads it, checks it against something and passes it on. My rough estimate for all of that is about $2,500 or more per change. That isn’t a measured number. It’s my rough estimate, and it varies widely by job, owner and contract. But I haven’t seen one get processed for free.
Put the two sides together and a small change can cost everybody more to process than the work is worth. That’s the same kind of money the owner was talking about in that preconstruction meeting.
Why do change orders get kicked back?
Because something was missing. Not enough backup. A price that didn’t match the scope. Hours that looked high next to similar changes. So it goes back for more backup or a re-price.
Every trip around that loop costs again, on both sides. Your field and office time starts over. My project engineer reads it again. The architect may see it again. The meter doesn’t reset. It keeps running.
The cheapest change order is the one that goes through the first time. Send it with what it needs to stand on its own: what changed, where, who directed it, and the hours and material behind the number. Point it at the document that caused it, whether that’s an RFI answer, an ASI or a revised sheet. Then it gets an internal review on my side, where I check the pricing against the history of changes from that same subcontractor. If your numbers line up with what you’ve sent before, it moves. If they jump, it gets a closer look. If you’re not sure where a change came from, revision clouds and deltas walks through how to chase it back, and who updates the drawings covers who’s supposed to get it onto the sheet.
Two roads a change can take
Not every change goes through the same process.
Some stay inside the GC. The GC pays for it out of internal allocated budgets, or it gets handled between the GC and the sub. Fewer people touch it, and it tends to move faster.
Others have to go to the owner. That adds another round of review, more people and more time. Now it’s not only my project engineer and me reading it. It’s the owner’s side too, and the architect.
You won’t always know which road your change is on. It’s still worth knowing both exist, because it explains why two changes that look the same from your side can take very different amounts of time to come back.
Is a minor change order worth it?
Under $1,000 is where this gets painful. The paperwork can cost as much as the work, or more.
Say it’s about $300 of work, a small ductwork extra on a job you’re already on. By my template it costs about $400 just to produce the change order. Then it goes into review on my side. That’s a loss before anybody has even read it.
That’s why good PMs bundle small items. Hold a few small ones and send them together, and the paperwork gets paid for once instead of once per item. And sometimes a small extra of about $300 can be absorbed as a couple of hours inside a bigger change that’s already going through.
But padding shouldn’t become the standard. I check the hours on a change against similar changes I’ve seen before, and hours that don’t match the work get noticed. If you’re folding something small into a bigger change, tell me before you send it. Explained, it’s reasonable. Unexplained, it looks like padding.
Don’t bundle yourself past the deadline
Here’s the catch with bundling. Contracts have deadlines to submit changes.
If you sit on a change to bundle it with the next one, and the next one is slow to show up, you can miss the notice window. Then the bundle you were being smart about can be worth nothing.
So read the change and notice clause in your contract before you start holding things back. Know how long you have. If you’re not sure what counts as notice on your job, ask your PM or somebody qualified. I’m not a lawyer, and this isn’t legal advice.
Small changes add up in schedule, not only money
“While you’re here” is how two days becomes three. On a big job it’s how three years becomes three and a half. Some people call it scope creep.
Every small change is time too. Time to price it, time to review it, time waiting on an answer, time to go back and do the work, time to get material. None of it looks like much alone. Stacked up, it moves the schedule.
Timing makes it worse. A change on paper is cheap. A change after the metal is cut means new material, somebody measuring, delivering, staging and installing it, and maybe taking down what’s already hung. I laid that out in the “What it costs once metal is cut” section of why your RFI came back useless. Catching problems on the drawings is cheaper than any of it, which is what who owns the duct design and shop drawings vs construction drawings are about.
What to say
My rules don’t change. Nothing gets agreed out loud. Every change goes in a text, a recap email or an RFI. I don’t start until the price and the time are in writing. Here’s how that sounds.
Offering to bundle: “This one’s small, and on its own it would cost more to process than the work is worth. I’d like to roll it into the change we’re already pricing as a couple of hours. I’m telling you now so it’s not a surprise when you check the hours.”
Declining to start without it in writing: “I’m very interested, but I don’t start until the price and the time are in writing. Send me an email or an RFI with the direction and I’ll get you a number.”
When you don’t know yet: “I am very interested, but I need to check on the material before I guess. I’ll text or email it to you.”
When somebody says “it’s small, just do it,” that’s the moment to remember that no change order is free. Somebody pays for it. Make sure it’s written down who.
Once you have the number, you still have to hand it to somebody. I built a free estimate and invoice tool for tradespeople, no signup, no subscription: quickdrawinvoice.com
Common questions
How much does a change order cost?
There isn’t one number. In my example, producing one costs a sub about $400 at minimum, and my rough estimate for the GC, owner and architect side is about $2,500 or more. An estimate of the time value of money. Both vary a lot by job, owner and contract. Redo the template with your own numbers.
Is a change order fee the same as the cost of a change order?
Not quite. The cost is what it takes everybody to produce and process a change, whether anybody bills for it or not. How a sub recovers it varies. A lot of the time, the time to generate the change is carried in the overhead. Not always. Some subs break out hours for field coordination and overall management, then mark up the entire change with their overhead and profit (O&P). Some owners I’ve worked with strike the management time on a change. They allow only the costs of the actual work and count the O&P as what covers the management side. So before you add a separate fee or a management line, read your contract and find out how your GC and owner treat it.
Are change orders common in construction?
On my desk, every week. Common doesn’t mean cheap, which is the whole point of this post.
Why do change orders need to be tracked?
Because small ones add up. Each change lands as variance against the budget baseline, which is the first version of the budget. The budget moves up and down as changes come in, but the baseline stays put, so it works as the gauge you measure every change against. Changes move the schedule too. And contracts usually set a deadline to submit them. The changes nobody tracked are the ones nobody pays for.
Is a minor change order worth submitting?
Sometimes not on its own. If the paperwork costs more than the work, bundle it with others or fold it into a bigger change, and say so before you send it. Just don’t hold it so long that you miss your contract’s deadline.