Imagine working on a project for a client, but then the client’s company has new owners. Would you expect the project to keep going along smoothly, or would you anticipate some big changes due to the change in ownership?

In this story, a project manager at a construction company is in this situation, and there were definitely some bumps in the road. The biggest issue was a request the client made, but the project manager made sure the client got exactly what he requested whether he liked it or not.

Keep reading for all the details.

You sure you want all that paperwork?

At the time of MC, I was a Project Manager for a smaller industrial construction company, on the gulf coast. We were adding on to an existing chemical plant, in multiple phases.

The first phase of the project went well. The client rep was easy to get along with and was very reasonable.

He reported to their PM, but we almost never dealt with her.

We would have weekly status meetings to discuss cost projection and forecasts, schedule updates, change orders (COs), and requests for information (RFI), all of which always went well.

Changes in ownership often lead to problems.

Towards the end of the first phase the client was bought and merged with another company.

This wasn’t a problem at first; we finished the first phase under budget, ahead of schedule, and was awarded the second phase.

The new owner decided the previous PM wasn’t “adequate” and wanted her replaced. Pretty common practice when things like this happen, they want people they know and trust.

This change also changed the representative we had built a relationship with.

Everything seemed to be going fine.

While funding was getting worked out for the second phase, at the request of the client, my company kept me and three of my direct reports on (project manager(me), cost controller, construction manager, and admin). We assisted with scope development, contract T’s and C’s, construct-ability reviews, material ordering, and general planning.

After two months, the client gives us the green light to proceed, so we get to work.

I am not what is referred to as a “change order artist”, in my industry. Unless it’s a change of scope or an extreme unforeseeable/weather delay, I try to steer away from requesting more money as much as possible.

Sometimes there’s no avoiding it, especially when the scope of work is lacking, but we had ample opportunity to vet and assist in defining the project scope and I had estimated we would have roughly 25 change orders. Some jobs are not so lucky.

They didn’t expect it to take so long to get permits.

We had accounted for 30 minutes every morning for safety talks and work permits to be given to the crew foremans, which is pretty standard for this client/facility.

First day takes three hours to get permits. I think it’s just growing pains, new people, it will improve.

Second day: three hours, third day: 4 hours…

Day four is our first weekly meeting, and I bring this up, with some draft “test” COs, RFIs, and reports to see how the new PM wants to see our weekly data moving forward.

It seemed like they had worked it out.

We discuss the permitting issue and I explain that I’m pretty flexible and believe in a give and take relationship, but I need help with permits if we’re going to meet the project deadline and budgetary constraints.

The PM decides he wants change orders submitted weekly, in arrears one week, to have real time numbers.

This goes well for a couple weeks, permit issuance time went down and I fell into my, “give and take” attitude. I wouldn’t include every delay or change, believing this was the high road, and trying to build a relationship.

Then something happened. The PM got weird. His whole attitude and demeanor changed.

He made a really crazy demand.

The PM states he now wants change orders submitted every day, per discipline, per instance.

I try to explain we have 4 disciplines and that would be an enormous amount of unnecessary paperwork, and that I’d rather have a conversation about these as some of them will not be worth the paper they’re written on.

But he insists, “EVERY DEVIATION. EVERY CHANGE! I want everything on paper and submitted daily for approval. All supporting documentation needs to be included”.

His attitude change clicks with me now, he thinks we won’t be able to keep up with the mountain of paperwork. He even made it a point to amend our contract with this, stating if we didn’t follow this, we would lose billing rights for extra work.

OP made sure everyone knew what to do.

Queue MC

I sit down with my cost controller, const. mgr, and 8 foreman to explain what the client wants. Any scope change, permit delay, operations delay, or scaffold delay was to be radioed in immediately to the cost controller to request a new cost code to track hours.

We would track any materials or equipment rentals to these respective codes, as well. We would develop an estimate on the scope changes and on the delays we would provide actual hours and submit these requests at the end of each day.

Once the work for the scope changes were completed, the original CO estimate would be actualized. The individual COs would then be submitted as independent invoices at the end of the month, in addition to our normal “scope” invoices.

There were a LOT of change orders.

This was not a large project at all, valued at ~$8mm for four months worth of work and 100 construction personnel.

When the project was all said and done we had submitted roughly 800 change orders, valued at $1.6mm.

The PM and his team would have to review 150-200 invoices a month. Some of which were only $54.00 for a 15 minute delay.

It gets even better.

The cherry on top: the client now took too long to vet the invoices, and wouldn’t pay timely, per the contract. Every month the client had to pay an additional 3% due to late payment fees.

Petty? It sure was, but I gave him exactly what he wanted.

I ended up making my company, and me, a lot of money on that project.

I’m not sure that it was malicious. They gave the PM exactly what he requested.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This is a good question.

I hope so too!

This is a crazy amount of change orders!

Here’s another story about change orders.

That has to be a world record for the number of change orders!

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.