Change Orders on Federal Jobs — How to Get Paid for What Actually Changed

By Sean & Doug Reitmeyer — GCExperts. Written from real contractor conversations, calls, and workshops.

A change order is what happens when the job stops looking like the job you priced. On federal work, that's not an exception, it's the season. The contractors who make money on government jobs aren't the ones with the best pricing — they're the ones who know how to get a change order paid.

Let me give you the pattern, because the pattern is the whole lesson.

We were on a job and somebody said the word "mold." Shut the whole job down immediately. Now, most contractors in that moment do one of two things: they wait for the government to tell them what to do, or they fix it themselves and hope to get paid later. Both are wrong.

Here's what actually happened, day by day. Day one: I emailed the contracting officer with a picture. "You seem to have a mold problem. Tell me what you want done." No answer. Day two: another email. "If you're not going to act, I'm going to find a list of licensed mold remediation contractors near the project." No answer. Day three: I sent them the list. "Here are ten licensed companies within twenty miles. Pick three." Day four: I told them I'd called them all and three were willing to come out, and I needed a date. Day five: "One of them will be there Tuesday at ten. If you can't meet him, let me know." The government finally said, I'll be there.

Three quotes came back: 28,000, 31,000, and 26,000. We got the work done and we got it paid, because by the time the invoice showed up, there was a five-email paper trail showing we did everything possible to keep the government in the loop, get competitive pricing, and stay moving.

The other end of the same tool. One of our guys was getting the runaround on a change order at an Air Force base. He was calling and complaining and getting nowhere. So I sent one email — as the founder of the federal construction magazine, writing to say I understood there was a dispute on this contract, and I thought it would make a good story for our readers, about how contractors work at that base. I named the contract. Next morning the contractor calls me: "What the hell did you do? The contracting officer just called and asked me to come up right away to negotiate and settle the change." Nobody wants their dispute written up in front of 22,000 contractors and 372 federal construction attorneys.

Two lessons. One: documentation is leverage. Every unanswered email is evidence that you acted and they stalled. Two: the government negotiates when it's more uncomfortable to say no than to settle. Your job is to make stalling uncomfortable.