A Critical Examination of Change Control Processes

This paper reviews studies on change control processes in construction to inform future research. It starts by defining and distinguishing change, variations, change orders, change management processes and control. The review then identifies two streams in the existing literature: the first empirically describes change order causes and effects on projects, and the second seeks to develop new models for managing change processes. The review is timely as major construction projects, such as Crossrail, are implementing configuration management principles to manage change. While the extant model-building work by researchers provides a useful starting point for further research, this paper argues that there is important work to do, that is less high-level and more empirically grounded, to examine, test and extend established principles of configuration management.