Variations & Claims: The Work Nobody Priced
Variations are the work nobody priced, agreed on site under time pressure, and argued about at final account. Why the instruction matters more than the price, what makes a claim survivable, and the five-line note that protects a contractor better than any contract clause they will actually read.
Every contractor has lost money on variations and very few have lost it dramatically. It goes in small pieces: an extra door opening, a change of finish, a foundation deeper than the drawing because of what was found, a client standing on site saying "just do it, we will sort it out". Each is too small to stop work over. Together they are frequently the difference between the margin bid and the margin achieved.
The reason they are lost is almost never that the work was not genuine. It is that at final account the contractor is asked to prove three things — that it was instructed, that it was additional, and that this was its cost — and can usually prove only the last one.
The instruction is the asset
Contractors focus on pricing variations and underinvest in recording that they were instructed at all. That is the wrong emphasis, because a fair price for uninstructed work is worth nothing, while an instructed variation at a disputed price is a negotiation you will substantially win.
An instruction does not have to be formal to be useful. It has to be contemporaneous, specific, and communicated to the person who gave it. A note written on the day, sent to the client the same evening, saying what was asked for and by whom, is a far stronger position than a formal variation order prepared three months later from memory.
The five lines that survive a final account
Date. Who instructed it, by name. What was instructed, in one plain sentence. What it affects — cost, programme, or both. Sent to the instructing party the same day. That note takes four minutes and is stronger evidence than most of the formal documentation produced afterwards.
Three kinds of change, three different claims
Lumping every change together as "variations" is what makes them hard to argue. They arise for different reasons and are established by different evidence.
| Type | What it is | What must be shown |
|---|---|---|
| Instructed variation | The client asked for something different or additional | The instruction, and that it was outside the original scope |
| Site condition | What was found differs from what was documented | What was found, when, with evidence — photographs and dated records |
| Delay and disruption | You were prevented from working as planned | Cause, dates, the programme impact and the cost consequence |
The second is the one contractors handle worst and it is the most winnable. A site condition claim rests on evidence of what was actually encountered, and that evidence is available for approximately one day — after which it has been dug out, covered up or built over. Photographs with dates, taken before the work continues, decide these claims almost by themselves.
The third is the hardest, and worth being realistic about. Delay and disruption claims require a programme that was being maintained before the delay, which is precisely what most contractors do not have. A claim asserting four weeks of delay, supported by a plan nobody updated since month one, is very difficult to sustain — see dependencies and the critical path.
A fair price for uninstructed work is worth nothing. An instructed variation at a disputed price is a negotiation you will largely win. Spend your effort on the instruction, not the pricing.
Price it before you build it, when you can
Pricing a variation before executing it is obviously preferable and frequently impossible — the work must proceed, the client is on site, and stopping costs more than the variation is worth. The workable compromise is to separate the two acts.
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Confirm the instruction immediately, in writing
Same day. This is the part that must never be deferred, and it is the part that most often is.
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State that a price will follow, and by when
A sentence in the same note. It preserves the client's ability to change their mind before the cost is incurred, which is fair, and it prevents "you never said it would cost extra" later.
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Capture the actual cost as it happens
Labour hours, materials issued, plant time, all coded to the variation rather than absorbed into the job. This is the mechanical part and it is where most of the money is quietly lost.
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Price and submit within a fortnight
Not at final account. A variation priced three months later reads as an afterthought and invites scrutiny that a prompt submission never attracts.
Code the cost, or the claim is an estimate
This is where a variation claim is won or lost mechanically. If the labour and materials that went into the additional work were absorbed into the project's general costs, then any figure you present at final account is a reconstruction — and a reconstruction is arguable in a way that a record is not.
Two versions of the same claim
Illustrative, in KES. The work was identical in both versions. The difference is entirely evidential: an estimate invites a counter-estimate and settles near the middle, while a record invites a check and settles near the record. Coding costs to the variation at the time takes a few seconds per transaction.
Keep a register, however crude
There is no dedicated variations register in the product, and rather than imply otherwise it is worth saying what a workable substitute looks like, because contractors who keep one are in a completely different position at final account from those who do not.
One row per variation: a sequential number, the date, who instructed it, one sentence of description, its status — instructed, priced, submitted, agreed, rejected, paid — and the value. Reviewed at the site meeting every fortnight. That is a spreadsheet or a shared document, and it is a fifteen-minute habit that turns the final account from an archaeology exercise into a comparison of two lists.
What the system contributes underneath it: costs coded to the job and to the variation, documents and instructions stored with access logging, orders raised against additional work, and committed cost visible before the invoices arrive.
What we do and do not do
What AWRA OpsHub does today
- Costs coded to a job, including labour time, materials issued, purchases and expenses.
- Committed versus actual cost, so an order placed for variation work is visible immediately.
- Document storage with access logging, for instructions, photographs, drawings and correspondence.
- Purchase orders and approvals against additional work, with thresholds enforced.
- Project budget against actuals, so a job drifting beyond its budget is visible while there is time to act.
- Reporting on project cost, schedulable to whoever runs the commercial review.
What it does not do
- No variations register. There is no object with a status per instruction; the register described above is yours to keep.
- No claim assembly. Nothing compiles instructions, costs and correspondence into a submission document.
- No programme impact analysis. The critical path is computed in relative day offsets, which supports a conversation about sequence but is not a delay analysis for a formal claim.
- No contract or clause management. Which contract form you are under and what it requires by way of notice is outside the system entirely — and notice periods are where claims most often die.
That last line deserves emphasis. Most standard contract forms require notice of a claim within a defined period, and a valid claim submitted late can fail entirely. No software watches that clock for you; your contract administrator must.
Our take
Confirm every instruction in writing the same day, photograph unexpected site conditions before the work continues, and code variation costs as they are incurred rather than reconstructing them later. Keep a one-row-per-variation register reviewed fortnightly, and check your contract's notice periods — a valid claim submitted late is worth exactly as much as an invalid one.
See project cost control
Costs coded to the job as they are incurred, committed versus actual, budget tracking and documents stored with access logging.
Explore project costingFrequently asked questions
What is the minimum record for a variation instructed verbally on site?
Five lines, written the same day and sent to the person who instructed it: the date, their name, one plain sentence describing what was asked for, whether it affects cost or programme or both, and confirmation that a price will follow. Four minutes of work, and it is stronger evidence than most of the formal documentation produced months later, because it is contemporaneous and it was communicated at the time.
Is there a variations register in the system?
No — there is no object with a status per instruction, and we would rather say so than let you discover it at final account. Keep a simple register yourself: number, date, who instructed, one-line description, status and value, reviewed at every second site meeting. Underneath it, the system holds the costs coded to the job, the stored instructions and documents, and any orders raised for the additional work.
How do we prove a site condition claim?
With dated evidence captured before the work continues — photographs above all. This is the most winnable category of claim and the most commonly lost, because the evidence exists for roughly one day and then it is excavated, covered or built over. Take the photographs, store them against the project, and write the note the same day. Almost nothing else about the claim will matter as much.
Why do our variation claims get reduced so heavily?
Usually because they are presented as estimates rather than records. An estimate invites a counter-estimate and settles near the middle; a cost coded to the variation as it was incurred invites a check and settles near the recorded figure. The second most common reason is timing — a variation priced at final account rather than within a fortnight reads as an afterthought and attracts scrutiny that a prompt submission does not.
Can the system produce a delay claim?
No. The critical path is computed in relative day offsets rather than calendar dates, which is enough to support a conversation about sequence and slack but is not a delay analysis suitable for a formal claim. More fundamentally, a delay claim needs a programme that was being maintained before the delay occurred — which is the real constraint for most contractors, and no tool supplies it retrospectively.
