Benchmarking change order impacts on productivity for electrical and mechanical projects

This paper seeks to analyze and reduce productivity losses due to change orders. It consists of two parts. For the first section, literature on quantification of productivity losses was scanned and several hypotheses regarding the sources of productivity losses due to changes were developed. These hypotheses were then tested with the collected data using appropriate techniques. For the second section, the current database was divided into three parts, which are small-, medium- and large-sized projects. These projects were also classified as impacted and unimpacted quantitatively. The questions in survey forms were then modeled as independent variables in the database. The analyses of variance (ANOVA) was run separately for each variable to check if there is any statistical difference between impacted and unimpacted projects. Interpretations on significant variables are also provided. The paper defines the most important variables that bring higher disruptions.