Change Orders Ordeal: The Output of Project Disintegration
Roberto Soares

Abstract
Change orders are one of the most controversial issues in construction contracts and require successful negotiations to avoid claims and possible litigation. Contractors, owners and architects behave differently when dealing with change orders. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that change orders are the natural result of the disintegration of design and construction, which started in the US in 1893 with a Congressional Act formally separating the design and construction phases of a capital project .Delivery methods such as Design-Build (DB) and Construction Management at Risk (CMR), which are designed to mend the missing integration of design and construction and, consequently, eliminate the existence of change order conflict are proposed to recover the level of integration that existed at the time of the master builder.

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