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Check who actually has authority to instruct

Your subcontract names who can instruct changes, and a change agreed with anyone else can be disowned later. Learn the named roles on day one and route every instruction through them.

Updated: . By Jack Butler-Kettle, Construction Claims Consultant.

Why it matters

The people who ask for changes on site are usually not the ones your subcontract names. It might be the site agent, the clerk of works, or the client's facilities manager walking through. Each of them can make the work happen. None of them can make it payable.

When your account goes in, the named person says they never instructed it, and they are right. You have done the work at your own cost on the say-so of someone with no power to commit the money. Know the names on day one, and every request can go to someone whose signature counts.

How to do it

  1. List the roles your subcontract names as able to instruct, on the day it is signed. Add the named people and what each can and cannot authorise.
  2. Give the list to your site team, and tell them to report any request from anyone else, not act on it.
  3. Write the same day to the named person when a request comes from anyone else, asking them to confirm the instruction.
  4. Do not start the changed work until the confirmation arrives, unless the named person agrees in writing that you can.

Example

Illustrative example. The scenario and figures are invented.

The facts

A subcontractor's contract names the main contractor's project manager as the only person who can instruct variations. On a Thursday, the client's facilities manager walks the floor and asks the subcontractor's foreman to move six socket outlets. That is about £1,800 of work.

What happens

  1. The foreman reports the request to the office instead of moving the outlets.
  2. The commercial manager emails the main contractor's project manager that afternoon, describing the request and asking for an instruction.
  3. The project manager replies on Friday, instructing the change and adding a seventh outlet.
  4. The work is done the following week against the written instruction.

The outcome

The £2,100 for seven outlets is paid without argument. Done on the facilities manager's say-so, the work could rightly have been refused, because the project manager never instructed it.

To have this set up for you, see our Unpaid Variation Prevention service.