For George Player, a Project Manager at Walsh Brothers, managing change orders and T&M workflows on fast-moving, high-stakes renovation projects used to mean one thing above all else: chasing.

Chasing subcontractors for their logs, chasing responses to pricing requests, chasing down the information needed to put together a confident monthly forecast. On a healthcare or higher education renovation with anywhere from ten to twenty-five active subcontractors, that chase consumed a meaningful chunk of time and productivity every week.

That chase had a fundamental root cause: everything was done manually. Each subcontractor maintained their own change order log, and every one of them looked different.

"Every sub formats things differently," says Player. "You end up compiling and piecing it together from a dozen different sources, and you're never quite sure you've got the full picture."

Reconciling those logs against Walsh Brothers' own tracking meant cross-checking formulas in spreadsheets and hoping nothing had slipped through.

Pricing exercises for design changes followed the same pattern. Bulletins went out by email, responses trickled back across separate threads, and tracking which subcontractors had submitted pricing meant maintaining yet another spreadsheet on the side.

"You're constantly chasing people down to find out who has submitted pricing, ROMs, and no-cost impacts and who hasn't," says Player. "There's a lot of searching through emails, trying to piece together a complete picture of where everything stands. That's time that should be going into managing the project."

All of that changed when Walsh Brothers brought Clearstory onto a higher education renovation project at Northeastern University. The project involved more than a dozen active subcontractors across a complex renovation scope, with the client expecting regular, accurate reporting on cost exposure throughout. Getting change order alignment from the start was critical.

Developed by former contractors to rescue projects still grappling with manual Change Order processes and paper-driven workflows, Clearstory's core product is a shareable, cloud-based Change Order Log that creates instant transparency between stakeholders and features simple but powerful workflows to capture field-directed extra work, conduct pricing exercises, manage allowances, and streamline Change Order review in real-time.

The shift to Clearstory’s shared real-time log changed how Player managed the change order process from the ground up. Where reconciling subcontractor logs once meant compiling a patchwork of formats and chasing down missing information, everything now lived in one place with a consistent structure.

Real-Time Visibility Into Cost Exposures

"Everything is formatted the same and it's all in one concise location," says Player. "That alone is a significant improvement over how we were doing things before."

The COR log dashboard, in particular, gives Player a clean summary view of total exposure at a glance, which has made monthly reporting noticeably faster.

"It definitely saves me a few hours a month on reporting," Player says. "Before I'd be going to my spreadsheet, highlighting cells, double-checking formulas, and making sure everything lined up. With Clearstory, the COR Log summary is right there at the top and I can get what I need quickly."

Clearstory change notifications have also transformed how Walsh Brothers manages pricing exercises with subcontractors. Rather than emailing out bulletins and tracking responses manually, Player can now send a notification through Clearstory and see immediately which subcontractors have responded and which still need follow-up.

Smooth Trade Adoption & Instant Alignment

"It's much more standardized," says Player. "If only five or six subs have cost for a particular RFI, it's easy to narrow that down and keep everything in one place rather than hunting through email threads."

That kind of comprehensive backup and history has also changed how Player handles disputes over late or missing change orders. When a subcontractor claims they never received a pricing request, Clearstory's change notification record tells the full story: exactly when the notice went out, who received it, and whether it was acted on.

"It's easy to pull up exactly when we sent out a notice and what happened from there," says Player. "Having that history right there makes those conversations a lot cleaner and a lot faster to resolve."

Trade adoption on the Northeastern project was straightforward. Several subcontractors were already using Clearstory on other jobs and needed no transition at all. For those newer to the platform, the learning curve was short, and uploading CORs and backup was easy.

"The real-time visibility in Clearstory works great for our subcontractors too because they can point to exactly what they provided and when," says Player. "It's a great solution for everyone on the project."

Looking ahead, Player is clear about where Clearstory fits into his future projects. "I feel very confident going forward," he says. "I'd be more than confident implementing Clearstory from day one and pretty much getting rid of my spreadsheets entirely."

For another Walsh Brothers PM asking whether it is worth it, he doesn't hesitate. "I would definitely recommend it," says Player. "It was well worth spending the money on. We like where it's heading and I'd put it on every project going forward."