Maintaining Change Order Approval Rules

The change order process allows your agency to make legal changes to a signed contract. The change order process includes creating, approving, and tracking contract changes.

Before change orders can be created, the agency must establish approval groups and approval rules. Approval rules are used by the agency to define the approval levels for change orders and the sequence in which approval groups must perform the approvals. Approval rules are based on these factors:

The type of contract
The functions included in a change order
The amount of money a change order increases the contract
The addition of a new item to the contract

When you click the Change Order Approval Rules link in the Reference Data component, the system takes you to the Change Order Approval Rules Overview where you can maintain and define the set of rules that apply to each combination of contract type and change order function.

The maximum dollar amounts must be established for one or more approval levels for the different change order types associated with each type of contract. The following conditions apply when you create new approval rules:

Before any rules can be established, the approval levels for the contract type and change order function must be established.
If the rules are not established before a change order is created for a particular contract type and change order function, the system assumes the change order function requires the highest level of approval and applies those rules.
No rules may be specified for the highest approval level. Therefore, if there is only one approval level, no rules may be entered.
If the rules for a lower approval level are entered as zeros, this level is ignored in the approval hierarchy.
Rules may only be added within the range of previous and subsequent rules (that is, within the hierarchy).
Rules may only be deleted beginning with the last rule, as the lowest approval level and working up the hierarchy.
If any one criteria is left blank, the Change Order will automatically go to the next approval level. If a Change Order is to stop at an approval level (for certain criteria) a value must be assigned to each of the fields. If there are certain criteria that are not important to the agency’s change order processing (for example, Max % of Bid Item), then some unrealistic value that will never be reached should be entered (for example, 999.99%).

To maintain a change order approval rule, type criteria in the Quick Find search box to locate a specific rule, or click Show first 10 to display all the change order approval rules in the system. The system displays a list of change order approval rules that match your search criteria. Each row contains an Actions button and current values for the following fields:

To change the information in a change order approval rule, click the Change Order Type link in the list. For more information, see Changing a Change Order Approval Rule.

To add a new change order approval rule to the system, select Add from the Actions menu on the component header. For more information, see Adding a Change Order Approval Rule.

To delete a change order approval rule, select Delete from the Actions menu on the approval rule's row. The system shades the row gray to indicate it is marked for deletion. To reverse the delete action, click the Undo button. Click the Save button to apply your changes to the system.

Note: You cannot delete an approval rule that is currently associated with a change order or a change order approval group.