The Hidden Cost of Collaborative Project Delivery: When Change Outruns Communication
By Cameron Page, Founder & CEO of Clearstory
If it feels like projects are being designed while they’re being built, it’s because they are.
Modern commercial construction delivers better outcomes because projects evolve as they are built. Design-build, rapid BIM coordination, fast RFIs, and early contractor involvement allow teams to refine scope continuously. This collaboration surfaces issues earlier, aligns stakeholders sooner, and strengthens asset value for owners.
These strengths also indicate that the industry is intentionally driving more change throughout the life of the job. Specialty contractors are often engaged before design is final and while drawings remain fluid. Their input improves constructability, pricing, and sequencing, but each refinement becomes another update that must be captured and communicated across the team.
This level of scope evolution is exactly what today’s collaborative workflows create. It is a natural and productive outcome of modern delivery. The challenge is that these refinements put pressure on traditional change-order workflows because the supporting tools were not designed to handle the frequency of changes that iterative project collaboration demands.
That gap between how we now build and how we still manage change orders is where friction emerges. Manual intake, disconnected logs, and static documentation cannot keep pace, creating misalignment, delays, and increased risk for all parties.
Change is Moving Faster Than Change Order Workflows Can Handle
The friction that arises in the change order process is unsurprising given the pace of project evolution today. Recent research from Clearstory confirms what teams are already experiencing. Eighty-six percent of general contractors say change orders are more frequent than they were five years ago, and 71 percent of specialty contractors report the same trend.
Teams are now managing constant adjustments throughout the life of the job, yet the workflows behind those adjustments still rely on email chains, side spreadsheets, and manual follow-ups. Even routine changes become slow and risky when handled this way.
Clearstory’s 2025 General Contractor State of Change Orders Report shows that more than half of all change order reports (CORs) go through at least two rounds of revision, and another 37 percent require three or more. Each revision adds a new version, a new set of attachments, and a new follow-up cycle, creating multiple points where general and specialty contractors can lose alignment.
Clearstory’s companion 2025 Specialty Contractor State of Change Orders Report reflects the same reality in the field. Seventy percent of specialty contractors say multiple revisions are standard, and many note that the pace of construction forces them to begin work before approvals are complete. 59% start work before documentation is complete, increasing exposure for both parties before there is a shared agreement on scope, pricing, or impacts.
In a constantly changing environment, each additional revision further slows the process. Logs fall out of sync. Updated pricing gets buried in inboxes. Internal forecasts drift from what stakeholders believe has been submitted or approved. By the time a COR reaches final sign-off, the project may already have progressed several steps.
The issue is no longer the volume of scope evolution but the inability of traditional workflows to absorb it. The administrative lift created by iterative revisions has become one of the most significant operational pressures on today’s project teams.
Traditional Tools Turn Normal Scope Change into Slow, Risky Progress
Scope change itself is not the problem. It becomes a problem when the project team’s communication supporting it cannot keep pace. Three operational realities from the research illustrate why:
- Manual intake slows everything down. Almost all CORs still arrive by email. Each request is submitted as a one-off message rather than through a structured workflow with shared visibility. Project stakeholders then track them in standalone spreadsheets and static COR logs that other project teams cannot see or update in real time.
- Communication gaps increase dispute potential. Because logs are disconnected, both sides often believe different CORs are pending, approved, or rejected. Specialty contractors say their general contractors are frequently surprised by submissions, and general contractors report the same misalignment with subs. These gaps are the natural result of information stored in static documents that become outdated the moment they are sent.
- Delays hit cash flow and closeout. General contractors report that change order delays can extend closeout by one to 12 months, with nearly half citing four to six months of added effort, while 58 percent of specialty contractors say approval delays impact cash flow at least occasionally, and another 19 percent say cash flow takes a COR approval hit every couple of months. When communication slows, billing slows, and every stakeholder absorbs the cost.
Scope Change Does Not Need to Create Instability
CURT members understand the tension between accountability and innovation. Owners want clarity. General contractors want predictable exposure. Specialty contractors want timely payment. All three want projects to move quickly without friction.
Change orders function best when communication keeps pace with the work, and that requires a level of transparency and speed that manual workflows cannot provide.
When teams share a single, real-time record of change orders, scope evolution becomes easier to evaluate. When time-and-materials (T&M) work is captured digitally and organized in real time, revision cycles accelerate. When backups are consistent and accessible, both sides reduce relationship strain and the risk of disputes. When communication flows in real time, changes are far less likely to disrupt the schedule or billing cycle.
Traditional workflows hide the true impact of change. Transparent, shared workflows reveal issues early, enabling project teams to manage scope changes without sacrificing momentum.
A Better Way Forward
Clearstory’s role in this shift is straightforward. We help the industry replace fragmented, reactive processes with shared visibility and structured communication. By digitizing T&M capture, centralizing and streamlining COR submissions, and creating a live, shared COR log, Clearstory helps project teams stay aligned throughout the life of the job, rather than struggling to catch up at the end.
Scope iteration will continue to accelerate as project delivery evolves. The opportunity is to ensure communication evolves alongside it. When teams can keep pace with change, scope becomes manageable and predictable rather than disruptive. And when transparency replaces manual handoffs, accountability strengthens rather than weakens.
The industry is not struggling because projects change too often. It is struggling because technology has not kept pace with modern project dynamics. That change order gap is the hidden cost of collaborative project delivery. Closing it is the next major opportunity for construction leaders who want more predictable projects and stronger partnerships.
Cameron Page is the founder and CEO of Clearstory, the construction industry’s only real-time network for change order communication. With more than a decade of project management experience at one of Silicon Valley’s largest general contractors, Cameron saw firsthand how outdated, fragmented change order processes slowed projects, strained relationships, and cost teams money. That experience ignited the idea for Clearstory: a modern, transparent, and collaborative way for construction teams to align and close change orders with speed and accuracy. Learn more at www.clearstory.build.