Agreed on Site. Argued About Later.
- WorkMobileForms.com
- Jan 1
- 3 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Arranging to meet someone can feel straightforward at the time. A place is mentioned, a rough time agreed, and both people walk away thinking it’s settled.
Later, when one person is waiting and the other hasn’t arrived, the details sound different. One thought “around seven” meant something else. The other remembers a different location.
No one was trying to be unclear. The agreement just wasn’t as fixed as it felt.
Every construction project involves change. Conditions differ from drawings, details evolve, and decisions are made in response to what is actually found on site. Most of these decisions are necessary and sensible, and they are usually made with the best interests of the project in mind.
Problems do not arise because change happens. They arise because of how change is agreed and remembered.
What felt settled on site often becomes debatable later.
How Informal Agreement Becomes Uncertain
Construction relies heavily on momentum. When an issue arises, stopping work to complete paperwork is rarely the priority. Supervisors, subcontractors, and project managers talk it through and agree a solution so the job can keep moving.
That approach works operationally, but it carries risk. Verbal instructions, messages sent in haste, or assumptions that something will be recorded later all rely on shared memory. Once time passes, that shared understanding begins to fade.
What felt obvious on site becomes open to interpretation when reviewed later. Intent is no longer clear. Context is missing. The decision still exists, but it is no longer anchored to a record everyone can rely on.
When Change Turns Into Commercial Dispute
Disputes around change rarely begin with confrontation. They begin with questions.
Was this instruction part of the original scope or an agreed variation?Who authorised it, and when? What information was available at the time the decision was made?
When these questions cannot be answered clearly, discussions slow down. Each party remembers the situation slightly differently, and the absence of a clear record allows uncertainty to grow. Time is spent reconstructing conversations rather than resolving outcomes.
At this stage, the issue is no longer the change itself. It is the difficulty in proving how and why it was agreed.
Why This Erodes Commercial Control
For commercial teams, informal change is one of the most persistent sources of risk. Variations that are not clearly documented are harder to price, justify, and recover. Instructions that were reasonable in context become contentious once they affect cost or programme.
This puts pressure on the organisation internally as well as externally. Commercial teams are asked to defend decisions they were not present for. Site teams feel challenged on actions they believed were agreed. Directors see margins eroded not through poor judgement, but through poor evidence.
Over time, this creates a culture of defensiveness around change, where teams become cautious not because decisions are wrong, but because they are hard to support later.
How Change Is Managed on Site Projects That Avoid This
On projects where change does not routinely lead to dispute, agreement is treated as something that needs to be captured, not just reached.
Decisions are recorded at the moment they are made, with enough context to preserve intent. Instructions are logged alongside the issue they relate to. Photos, notes, and approvals sit together, forming a clear record of why work proceeded in a particular way.
This does not slow delivery. It allows delivery to continue without creating future uncertainty. In practice, this is usually supported by a shared field-to-office system rather than relying on emails, messages, or memory. Tools such as WorkMobile are used here to make sure that when site decisions are made, they are immediately visible to the people who will need to rely on them later.
When agreement is captured properly, discussions about change become factual rather than interpretive.
Preserving Agreement Beyond the Moment
Change will always be part of construction. The difference between projects that absorb it smoothly and those that argue about it later lies in how agreement is preserved.
When decisions are captured at the time they are made, intent remains clear. Commercial conversations are shorter. Disputes reduce. Teams spend less time justifying past actions and more time focusing on delivery.
Agreed on site does not have to mean argued about later. But it does require agreement to be visible, not just remembered.
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