Change management

Everything that changes the job starts as a change event. From there it is priced, and then routed to whichever instrument the money actually belongs to. Open Changes in the LEDGER rail.

The Changes tool defaults to NONE on every seed role except Project Manager (ADMIN) and Superintendent (READ_ONLY). A superintendent sees what changed on the job, because a field order is a directive to their crew, without pricing it.

The chain

Change event  ->  PCO              ->  promote  ->  Owner change order (a prime contract amendment)
              ->  Contingency use
              ->  Internal budget move

Field orders and T&M tickets sit alongside as the field end of the same chain.

Log a change event

1. Open Changes and create an event.
2. Record where it came from. The origin kinds are RFI, ASI, RFP, RFR, Submittal, Field walk, Owner request, Credit, Scope gap, Field order and Other. An origin can carry the originating record's id, what a human calls it ("RFI 120"), and the counterparty's own reference for the same event.
3. Choose the scope, which is the routing decision and the most consequential field on the record:

Scope	Label	Where the money goes
OWNER	Owner (PCO)	Billed to the owner as a change order
CONTINGENCY	Contingency (CU)	Drawn from the project contingency
INTERNAL	Internal transfer	Moved inside your own budget

4. Optionally record a ROM, the rough order of magnitude. It is signed, so a credit is negative, and it is optional because at intake nobody may have a number and a fabricated placeholder is worse than an absent one.
5. Optionally record the IRN, the designer's formal response instrument, as a number plus the Drive item holding it.

An origin without a platform record id is fine. A field walk or an owner preference voiced in a meeting has no record to link, and refusing the event until someone manufactures one is how change logs end up in a spreadsheet.

Change events often start from an RFI or a submittal.

Change event lifecycle

Status	What it means
Open	Logged, not yet priced
Pricing	Being priced
Priced	Priced and ready to route
Promoted	Turned into an owner change order. Terminal
Void	Terminal

Actions: Start pricing, Mark priced, Return to pricing, Promote, Void. Promote and Void require Changes ADMIN.

Promote is not a button you can force. The transition is refused unless it comes through the promotion flow, so a hand-issued transition cannot mark an event promoted without an amendment behind it.

PCOs

A PCO is a priced change against the owner. It carries lines and markups.

Status	Effect
Draft	Being built
Submitted	Priced and sent. Feeds the budget's Pending Cost Changes column
Approved	Terminal. Eligible for promotion
Rejected	Terminal
Void	Terminal

Actions: Submit, Return to draft, Approve, Reject, Void. Approve and Void require Changes ADMIN. A PCO is editable in Draft and Submitted.

How a PCO prices

Lines are entered first. Each carries a budget code, a description and a signed amount. The subtotal is the sum of the lines.

Markups are then applied in order. Each markup has a rate in basis points and a basis:

Basis	What the rate applies to
LINES	The line subtotal. Order-independent
RUNNING	The running total so far. This is how overhead-then-profit stacks

The total is the running total after every markup. A negative rate is allowed and is a discount.

Markup is then allocated back onto the lines in proportion to the absolute value of each line's amount, so the burdened lines sum to exactly the PCO total. If every line is zero, the markup is split evenly. Burdened amounts are what roll up by budget code onto the Budget register.

Draft a change order from evidence

The AI affordance on a change event drafts change-order lines from what the event already carries: its description, the RFI text, the ticket references. It refuses rather than inventing when the event has none of those, and the refusal does not charge.

Two constraints on what comes back are worth knowing. The model may only pick markups from the project's declared defaults, and it may only use budget codes verbatim from the candidate list it was given. A code it invents comes back as no code with zero confidence rather than as a plausible wrong code.

Promote to an owner change order

Promotion bundles approved PCOs into a single amendment on the prime contract. The amendment's value is the sum of the promoted PCOs' totals.

1. Preview the promotion to see what will be bundled.
2. Promote. The amendment is created on the prime contract, and the PCOs are linked to it.
3. If you supply an executed date, the amendment is executed in the same run and immediately moves the contract's revised value. Without a date it lands as a Draft amendment and moves nothing until it is executed.

Promotion requires Changes ADMIN, and the prime contract must be executed. Up to 100 PCOs go into one promotion.

If a change event still carries open PCOs, the promotion reports that as a rejection on the event rather than failing the whole run.

Contingency uses

A contingency use draws against the project's contingency line.

Status	Label
draft	Draft
submitted	Submitted
pc_approved	P&C Approved
owner_signed	Owner Signed
rejected	Rejected
void	Void

Actions: Submit, Return to draft, P&C approve, Sign, Reject, Void. Approving and signing require Changes ADMIN. Owner Signed, Rejected and Void are terminal.

Signing requires the signed document. A contingency use cannot be moved to Owner Signed without a Drive reference to the signed paper.

Only Owner Signed uses count as drawn. Submitted and P&C Approved count as pending.

The contingency line

Where the contingency amount comes from is resolved at read time and reported, never inferred:

Source	Meaning
Budget	A registered budget line supplies the amount
Manual	An amount entered in change settings
Unset	Nothing is on record

A contingency balance is never defaulted to zero. If the source cannot be read, the register says the balance is unavailable and gives the reason. A fabricated zero on a contingency register is a decision someone would act on.

Balance is the line amount less drawn. Projected balance is that less pending.

Field orders

A field order is a directive issued to a crew before pricing exists.

Status	Meaning
Issued	Directed, not priced
Priced	Priced
Void	Terminal

Actions: Mark priced, Reopen pricing, Void.

T&M tickets

A T&M ticket is the field record of extra work: the hours and quantities it took, and the two signatures against it. Open T&M Tickets in the rail.

A ticket carries no money at all. It records quantities. It is gated on the Changes tool, and every write on it, sign-off included, needs Changes STANDARD.

Status	Meaning
In progress	Being filled in
Ready for review	Out for sign-off
Revise and resubmit	Sent back with a reason
Rejected	Refused
Field verified	Both parties signed
Closed	Terminal

Status is derived from where the sign-off stands. You never pick it.

Lines

Three kinds: labor, material and equipment. Labor lines carry a time type: straight, overtime, double, premium overtime or premium double.

Quantities are entered as text and kept as exact hundredths of a unit, so the field can work in quarter hours. A third decimal is refused, not rounded:

Enter 6.25 rather than 6.253; nothing here rounds a figure somebody typed.

The two signatures

Sign-off runs in two steps, company first, then customer.

Response	What it does
Signed	Accepts
Signed with notes	Accepts with comment
Revise and resubmit	Sends back. A note is required
Rejected	Refuses. A note is required

Sending a ticket back without a reason is refused:

Say what needs correcting. A ticket sent back without a reason cannot be corrected.

Three things to be clear about:

• This is not an e-signature product. A signature here is a name, a role and an instant, recorded by an account holder. It carries no certificate, no tamper evidence and no identity verification.
• The customer's signature is recorded on their behalf by your team. The dialog says so: "Recorded by your team, on behalf of the customer signee. Enter their name and role exactly as they gave them." Enter their name, role and company as they gave them.
• One account cannot hold both steps. The company and customer signees must be different accounts, and the write is refused if they are not.

A revision always restarts the sign-off at the company signee. Signatures are append-only, and at the 40-signature cap the write is refused rather than the oldest being dropped.

Attaching a ticket to a change

A ticket may be attached to a change event only from Field verified or Closed:

Only a ticket both parties have signed may back a change. An unsigned ticket is an assertion, not evidence.

The change event also carries free-text ticket references, which is a separate field from the attachment.

A ticket gates nothing. No approval, payment or change order anywhere in the platform consults one.

The contingency report

Contingency Report in the Period Reports group shows contingency drawn by month, with a running drawn-to-date and the balance at each period end. Signed uses with no signed date are listed separately rather than dropped.

It ships inside the pay-application package.

Limits

Limit	Value
Change records per project	8,000
Lines per PCO	500
Markups per PCO	20
PCOs in one promotion	100
Ticket references on a change event	200
Drive items on a change event	200
T&M tickets per project	5,000
Lines per T&M collection	200
Signatures per ticket	40
Maximum quantity on a T&M line	999,999.99

Troubleshooting

Promote is greyed out or refused. Either you lack Changes ADMIN, or the prime contract is not executed, or you are trying to transition the event directly rather than through the promotion flow.

Signing a contingency use is refused. The signed document is not attached yet.

The contingency balance shows unavailable. No budget line or manual amount is registered for it, or the source could not be read. Set it in change settings, which requires Changes ADMIN.

A T&M quantity is refused. It carries more than two decimals, or it was sent as a number rather than as text. Enter it to hundredths.

Sign-off is refused because the signees are the same account. The company and customer steps must be held by different accounts.