Time-consuming, disconnected workflows for Change Orders and Time & Material (T&M) tickets have long been the norm in construction, and for years Castle Contracting’s project engineers faced the same burdens as their peers: chasing down handwritten tags, manually updating logs, and spending hours reconciling costs—often under tight deadlines and with limited visibility. These ingrained processes created friction in the field, slowed approvals, and left revenue exposed.

“I used to spend entire days just organizing Change Orders and manually recreating T&M Tickets,” says Alex Fesi, a senior project engineer supporting earthwork and site utility projects in St. Louis. “Now, what used to take hours takes minutes. Clearstory didn't just help us go digital — it freed up our time, protected our revenue, and made our clients happier.”

Before Clearstory, Castle’s Change Order process relied heavily on hand-written T&M Tickets filled out in the field, tossed in the backs of trucks, and often lost to time. On a single project, Alex Barger, who supports the renewable energy team at Castle, manually processed over 750 paper tickets in just six months, and still faced the same challenges as on other jobsites. “They’d get lost, they’d get forgotten, or worse — they’d turn up five months later after a job had already been closed out,” he explains. “That’s money left on the table.”

Both engineers point to the sheer risk of missed documentation. “If we didn’t capture every detail — who did the work, what equipment was used, what day it happened — we had no shot at billing it accurately,” says Barger. That meant hours of combing through paperwork, cross-referencing Excel logs, and chasing down field crews to reconstruct what happened days or weeks prior.

Fesi echoes that sentiment: “Sometimes I’d get a ticket five months after the fact — literally found behind a truck seat. By that point, it’s too late. You’re not getting paid for that work.”

Even when the tickets did make it in, the administrative burden was immense. Each ticket had to be manually organized, recreated in Excel, priced out, and matched to specific Change Orders. Then came the email chains with GCs and owners, each one requiring custom formatting or breakdowns by week, scope, or month. “It wasn’t just duplication of effort — it was multiplication,” said Barger. “And on one job with $4 million in T&M, that was two to three full days of my week.”

All of that changed with Clearstory. Purpose-built to help Specialty Contractors reduce risk and get paid faster on out-of-contract work, Clearstory’s core product is a shareable, cloud-based Change Order Log that creates instant alignment with GCs and features a tidy mobile app for digital T&M Tags, easy built-in Change Order templates, and instant pricing.

Fesi was initially skeptical about rolling out new software, especially to field teams who can be resistant to change. But that concern vanished immediately. “Usually, new tech means push back from the field. Not with Clearstory. Our craft professionals adopted it instantly,” he says. “They saw right away how much easier it made their lives. No more lost tickets, no more filling out the same info twice. They send it off and they’re done.”

One of the biggest game-changers was Clearstory’s integration with HCSS, Castle’s timecard platform. “We were concerned at first — is this really going to work? But the integration has been flawless,” said Barger. “All the data transfers over — time, materials, equipment — and now the ticket gets auto-generated from the timecard with one click. That’s not just convenient — it’s revolutionary.”

Clearstory also gives Castle clients access to a live digital log of all Change Order activity on a project, with full transparency into what was approved, under review, or pending discussion. “Instead of sending a single Change Order Request via email and hoping they see it, now our clients get a complete snapshot of everything we’ve done,” Fesi says.

And Barger uses Clearstory’s reporting features to get instant visibility into revenue at risk across multiple jobs and market teams. “It used to take hours of digging through spreadsheets just to figure out how much T&M we were running. Now I can run a report in seconds. That kind of visibility helps us manage risk and make decisions.”

When asked what they’d tell another regional team considering Clearstory, both Alexes didn’t hesitate. “It’s a no-brainer,” says Barger. “It’s easy to learn, quick to implement, and incredibly powerful. You’ll gain control over your T&M process like never before.”

Fesi agrees. “Even our less tech-savvy folks picked it up in no time. After just one ticket, they were 90% of the way to being experts. And the support from Clearstory’s team has been phenomenal — they actually listen and help make our crazy ideas happen.”

For Castle Contracting, Clearstory didn’t just replace paper. It replaced stress, delays, and uncertainty — with clarity, control, and cash flow.