Scope Control and Change Management - Instructor's Guide

Experienced owners, designers, and construction contractors are all aware that introduction of changes into a project can lead to problems and hinder project success. Changes may interrupt the flow of work, create delays, cause schedules to slip and inflate costs, which in turn may generate claims and even costly litigation. Scope control and change management are processes vital to any project and are addressed in this module. Scope control is a preventative process that starts with a detailed project scope and ensures discipline in changing the scope during project execution. Change management involves the processes for managing all changes that occur on a project. Scope control and change management have been the subject of several CII research efforts and recently the focus of CII Benchmarking and Metrics evaluation. Project change management is a CII Best Practice. Among the benefits of effective scope control and change management are:

• Reduction in project total installed cost and improvement in schedule performance
• Better predictability of project cost and schedule estimates
• Enhanced customer satisfaction
• A more orderly and less adversarial project environment