Adding Value to Change Order Management Process Using Simulation Approach: A Case Study

Change orders are inevitable in almost everyday’s construction project. They can significantly increase the project cost and duration, and lead to big number of claims and disputes, which in turn create an adversarial relationship among project participants. Studies revealed that improving the administrative process of change orders are beneficial in reducing the cost and risk for all the project participants and encouraging a more trustful relationship. Most process improvement proposals in current literature are mainly based on qualitative studies and may lead to sub-optimal solutions. This paper presents a comprehensive and quantitative analysis framework to accelerate change order processing for facility management settings. Discrete Event Simulation (DES) and Sensitivity Analysis (SA) were employed to examine the quantitative impacts of a variety of improvement proposals. A case study from a North American University is presented. The results demonstrate that the combined use of DES and SA as an analysis approach can help optimize the change order administrative process.