How Clune Construction Is Leveraging Clearstory to Simplify Pricing Exercises and Cut Change Order Processing Times in Half

When complete, the Stream Data Center hyperscale campus in Phoenix, AZ will include seven buildings with 480 megawatts of power capacity and a dedicated, on-site substation. Like all commercial construction projects, getting there has already required a series of ongoing design changes, prompting the Clune Construction team to seek a solution for capturing all Change Order communication in one place and eliminating the risk of costs being lost to error-prone manual processes.

“We were dealing with a lot of back-and-forth and emails for T&M Tickets and Change Orders,” explains Clune senior project manager Braden Borcherts. “One of the phases has 13 bulletins on it where there's just been a lot of stuff going back and forth and it's been really difficult and time consuming just to make sure that we're staying on top of everything.”

Looking for a way to collect and track those price-and-proceed costs from trade partners faster, and to streamline the Change Order process for all stakeholders, the project team piloted Clearstory’s Change Order communication tool to eliminate the inefficiency and risk associated with using email and manual workflows for aligning on critical out-of-contract costs. 

“With Clearstory, all of our change information, correspondence, and markups are in one shared Change Order log that updates in real-time,” Borcherts says. “This makes tracking and forecasting much easier, and communication with our trades is clear and recorded. There’s no longer a need to request Change Order logs that all arrive in different formats, so there’s a much more efficient path for Change Order review and approval.”

“The great thing about Clearstory is that all stakeholders can immediately see a record of everything that's been submitted and whether it's been rejected, approved, or tagged for a trade partner to revise and resubmit. It’s just a great tool to have in the toolbox.”

Braden Borcherts

Senior Project Manager, Clune Construction

Purpose-built by former General Contractors who saw their Specialty Contractors and projects suffering from Change Order workarounds and paper-driven processes, Clearstory’s core product is a shareable, cloud-based Universal Change Order Log that creates instant transparency between stakeholders and features simple but powerful workstreams to capture field-directed extra work, conduct pricing exercises, and streamline Change Order review. 

Prior to implementing Clearstory, the Clune team relied heavily on traditional T&M Ticket and Change Order processes, including the use of triplicate carbon copy paper tickets to track field-directed extra work and the back-and-forth reconciliation of different Change Order logs that might be out-of-date or have different cost points needing resolution. 

Designed to bring trust and transparency back to the Change Order process, Clearstory provides unique value to both GCs and subcontractors by capturing, tracking, and resolving Change Order requests while eliminating the mind-numbing exercise of compiling, exchanging, and hunting down emails and spreadsheets to align on cost exposures. Trade partners get paid faster for out-of-contract work, Clune is able to forecast project budgets with greater confidence and clarity, and teams are no longer burning productivity on data entry and archaic, paper-driven workflows.  

According to Borcherts, using Clearstory in place of those workflows is saving between 20 and 40 hours per month on administrative tasks alone. “It’s just so much easier to have everything in one spot and not have to constantly dig through emails,” he says. “I think it’s a valuable tool and would tell any other project manager to utilize it to its max potential. You’ll see real efficiency gains in managing the change process. It’s going to cut your time in half.” 

By providing a single, shared Change Order log where all out-of-contract costs and pricing exercises are tracked and resolved in real-time, Clearstory has provided the Clune project team at Stream Data Center with the transparency necessary to accurately capture and forecast costs and keep approvals moving forward. That benefits trade partners, who likewise can see when Change Orders have been submitted, how many days they’ve been waiting for approval, and whether or not they have received any markup and review, and by whom. 

Support from Clearstory also gets high marks from Borcherts, who says ease-of-use backed by great customer service is critical for the success of any field technology. In all, Clearstory has liberated the Stream Data Center project team from grueling, error-prone workflows while streamlining pricing exercises, improving forecasting for Clune, and accelerating cash flow for trade partners. 

“I wish I would have known about Clearstory from day one and we would have incorporated it right off the bat,” Borcherts says. “It takes a lot of the burden off of our plate for timely review and just makes everything easy to process so we can move the project forward and life is good.”  

About Clune

With a robust national footprint, Clune Construction stands as a leading General Contractor with offices in Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. Clune’s workforce of over 700 talented employee-owners manages an annual project portfolio exceeding $2 billion in commercial construction ventures.