Typically overlooked impacts that must be quantified include:
- Dilution of management on the project, which causes overall loss of productivity.
- Cash flow that incurs financing costs, as well as potentially keeping a contractor from taking early-pay discounts unless they are very well capitalized.
- Risk of not getting paid for completed change orders is typical and a significant cause of margin fade late in the project.
- Lowered customer satisfaction impacting future work can be the biggest cost of all. However, this does not mean avoiding real changes to the project.
- Productivity on the project suffers from many factors related to excessive changes, including dilution of management, schedule compression, overtime, additional mobilizations to the work area, and lower crew morale.
- Extended project overhead - general conditions.
Contractors, project owners, and architects that fully understand these put the resources in at the earliest design stages driven by weekly meetings and continue managing the project with the same discipline.
