An effective change control process

Crucial Elements of CHANGE CONTROL

Change form – An effective process must have a means of entry and some form of change request form achieves this. Depending on the industry this may be called a variation order, request for architect’s instruction or request for engineering instruction.The form will contain information such as: “Date; author; description of request; priority; impact of the change; date required by”.

Change log – The change request is logged within the change log and this provides a full audit trail for the project of all the changes.It will include information such as: “Change number; description of the change; author of request; date received; date evaluated; date decision made; decision; implementation date; status”.This enables any person to evaluate the status of changes within the project.

​Evaluation and prioritisation. Each change request needs to be evaluated and assigned a priority such as 1 – a must, 2 – important, 3 nice-to-have/cosmetic or 4 – no change required.

The following questions should be asked about the change itself:

• Is it possible?
• Is it customer requested, or self inflicted?
• If not customer requested, is it really necessary?
• What is the cost?
• Who will pay?
• How will progress be affected?
• What are the risks?
• What is the effect on the Business Case?
• How will safety, reliability and performance be affected?
• Will it affect work completed?
• What documentation needs to change?
• Should (and can) the change wait until after the current project ends?

Decision-making – There should be a defined person or group authorised to agree to implement changes. This could include a formal change control board, the sponsor, the project manager and the team managers.

Authority is often delegated at various levels, for example, the PM may be able to accept changes not exceeding 5% of the project budget, no single change to exceed £5,000 or causing more than 3 days delay. A similar formula would be defined for the different levels within the project organisation.

Change budget – If change control is to work efficiently then there must be some form of change budget available. Otherwise each and every change will result in a request to the funding body for additional funds to cover the changes. Including provisional and prime cost sums in the contract would be one type of change budget or a percentage of the total cost set aside for change, e.g. 15%.

Change Control Roles – List five roles that are fundamentally involved in change control and describe the contribution of each role.

Project Manager – The PM will be responsible for ensuring that the change requests are logged and that the change log is kept updated throughout the project. (Often this will be delegated to project support office.)

Once the change request is received the PM will have to analyse the change, asking a range of questions to establish what is actually required, how much it will cost, the effect of the change on the schedule and budget, the benefits and risks associated with the change. Once this analysis is complete the PM will pass the change onto the body authorised to agree the change, or otherwise.

Sponsor – The sponsor will be the focal point for decision making on change issues. S/he will sign off the change control process and will often take the role of authorising body. In any event the sponsor will chair the steering group.

The sponsor will discuss the change with the user and decide whether the change can be justified. It is likely that the sponsor will control the change budget.

Steering group – Often the steering group will act as a change control board. This forum has the authority to accept or reject changes (or put the on the pending pile). Chaired by the sponsor, the board will examine the PM’s analysis of the situation and make decisions about the change.

User – The user community will often be the prime source of change requests. They will be required to justify the change and provide the benefits information so that the PM can evaluate the cost benefit balance when s/he has obtained the costs for the change.

Supplier – The supplier can raise change requests although these are likely to be “internal” and raised to correct problems during the “build” process and therefore not chargeable to the customer.

The supplier will also examine customer change requests and provide the time and cost information required by the PM as part of his/her analysis. Income from change requests can form a key part of the supplier’s profit and care must be taken to ensure that the costs obtained are fully justified.

This risk could be limited by asking the supplier to include a schedule of rates within their bid.

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