Variation Orders and EOT

Today I received a very nice question asking about variation orders and how we can deal with variation orders in terms of extension of time.

so now you received a new variation order adding a new scope for your project now what you should do as a planning engineer?

first of all, you need to deal with the variation order as a new small project, you need to find the engineering procedures like shop drawing submittals, shop drawing approvals material submittals material, approvals material procurement delivery to the site. Then if you have any authorities approvals and then the installation or the execution of the works.

Then if there are any dependencies between the new scope of work and the original scope of work. let’s say you received a new variation order asking you Mr contractor we would like to change the flooring from porcelain to marble. okay so in that case you need to find the pattern of the marble, submit the shop drawings for approval, submit the material for approval then procure the marble and deliver it to the site to start the installation.

okay, why this could involve an extension of time? and what is the case where there is no extension of time?

usually, if it is issued at the beginning of the project then you have sufficient time to do all your engineering and deliver the material to the site and start the installation so you have no issues at all but if the client issued this variation order to you in a later stage of the project where you already had the approved shop drawings and the approved materials and you need to redo all of these works,  then it might involve an extension of time so in that case or in this scenario it is all about the timing.

So what do you need to do you? We will do this small project starting from the variation order date you receive and as I said before, procuring the material, approving the shop drawings, delivering the material, starting the installation, and then you will import this small project into your original baseline and link the successor and predecessor activities and you will see if the completion date of the project was impacted it means moved, then you have to claim for an extension of time if your project completion date was not impacted it means there are some floats you can use them and you are not entitled to an extension of time.

So the variation order you need to consider the timing because usually when the variation order is issued at the beginning of the project there is no issue at all, but the most common cause is that during the execution when everyone is busy doing the construction and so on the client start firing variation orders and this is a most critical one because you need to study it immediately and advise the client, Mr. Client, if you insist on this variation order it will cost you this amount of money and it will cost you an additional amount of time.

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