Scope of work is the description, usually within a contract or proposal, of exactly what a party is agreeing to perform, the foundational document that defines what’s included, and by clear implication, what isn’t, for a given piece of a construction project. Nearly every other scope-related term in construction ultimately traces back to this core concept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A well-drafted scope of work is specific enough to leave minimal room for interpretation. Rather than provide electrical work per plans, a strong scope of work might specify providing and installing all branch circuit wiring, devices, and panels shown on drawings E-101 through E-108, per Division 26 specifications, explicitly excluding low-voltage systems covered under a separate contract, precise enough that a dispute about coverage should rarely need to happen, because the document already answers the question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Vague scope of work is one of the more common sources of disputes and change orders across the industry generally, not because parties are acting in bad faith, but because ambiguous language genuinely supports more than one reasonable reading, and each party naturally tends to favour the reading that costs them less, especially once real money is on the line during buyout or execution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Scope of work documents from different trades within the same project need to be read together, not just individually, since the real test of adequate scope definition is whether every trade’s individual scope of work, combined, actually covers everything the project requires with no gaps and no unintended overlaps between them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A useful test for whether a scope of work document is specific enough: could two reasonable people reading it independently arrive at meaningfully different conclusions about what’s included? This type of ambiguity test is likely to show that the text needs to be clearer. If this test is used multiple times during drafting, it can catch many of the time-consuming, goodwill-draining language ambiguities that are discovered after conflicts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When drafting change orders, the order drafts should state what, if any, changes to the original scope have been made in order to show what, if anything, has been added, removed, or altered. A change order without reference to the original scope of work may, at a later time, give rise to ambiguity about what the current project scope is. To eliminate the ambiguity of the project’s current scope, maintain a summary of the current cumulative project scope and update this summary with each change order relative to the project log.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Scope of work is the description, usually within a contract or proposal, of exactly what a party is agreeing to perform, the foundational document that defines what’s included, and by clear implication, what isn’t, for a given piece of a construction project. Nearly every other scope-related term in construction ultimately traces back to this core […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-s"],"yoast_head":"\n