A change log is how a handshake, a verbal direction, or a stack of tickets becomes a file you can still explain at the end of the month. Each row is one potential or executed change. The backup (tickets, photos, proposals, signed documents) lives in a folder next to the sheet.

The working template, as a Markdown table you can paste into Google Sheets or Excel, is in templates/H7-07-change-order-log-template.md. The longer process is in “Change Orders: Paper First, Then the Work,” “Time-and-Material Tickets and the Change Order They Become,” and “How Procore Handles Change Events — and How to Do the Same With a Change Log.”

Procore’s change-event tools facilitate this same path on jobs that use them. A spreadsheet and a 06_Changes folder in Google Drive or Dropbox do the same job, as long as someone actually enters the row the day the change is directed.

What is in the template

The columns are: number; date identified; source (RFI, ASI, CCD, owner request, field condition, T&M, or other); description; area or drawing reference; status; amount, clearly labeled as an estimate, a submitted figure, or an executed figure; date submitted; date executed; whether it changes the work; whether it was filed in the current set; who in the field received it; a link to the backup; and notes.

I keep the status values short on purpose: Potential, Priced, Submitted, Executed, or Withdrawn. Nobody uses a wall of custom statuses.

The template includes example rows, clearly marked as examples, not from a named client.

How to run it

  1. Enter a potential change the day it is directed or discovered.
  2. A T&M ticket gets a row the same day. The ticket is backup, not a change order.
  3. Do not invent amounts. Label figures honestly.
  4. When a change is executed and it changes the work, file it with the current set and get it to the field before you call the row done.

If you want the log set up in your job file, or kept current on a retainer, I can do that. I do not negotiate the change. The files stay yours.

If you want help, not just a checklist

Some jobs run fine on a clean file and a superintendent who gives the log fifteen minutes twice a week. Others do not: revisions are moving fast, closeout is already behind, or the field simply has no hours left for paperwork.

That is where I come in. I set up the job file, run the logs on a retainer, or prepare closeout before the scramble starts. Your files stay yours, and there is no software contract to sign.

Email travis@builtonrecord.com Get the free Job File Kit