A change management toolkit for construction projects

Changes in construction projects often cause cost and time overruns. Because of the nature of design and construction of buildings, construction professionals often have to make decisions based on assumptions and previous experience. Changes at a later stage are sometimes inevitable. The aim of project change management is not to seek the elimination of all project changes, but to minimize the negative impact of necessary changes and to avoid unnecessary ones. At present, in practice, there is a lack of industrial standards for project change management procedures and methods. This often results in changes being poorly managed, on an ad hoc basis, by project teams during individual projects. This paper presents a change management toolkit, which was developed to provide a standard framework and tool support for change management in construction projects. © 2006 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC