Change is normal in projects — the question is not whether it happens, but how quickly your team can decide what to do about it. Every variation order, claim, and information request carries a clock. When decisions take weeks instead of days, costs grow, schedules slip, and the contractor’s confidence in your team erodes. This issue looks at how MCA-Nepal restructured its change management process around the discipline of timely decision-making — and why the PPMM treats this as one of the highest-leverage areas a program can get right.
During the IPM support mission in Kathmandu, the team worked with MCA/MCC-Nepal and the PMOSS consultant team to integrate the change control board with FIDIC contractual timelines. Variation orders, claims, and information requests now move through a single tracked process — with clear ownership, decision deadlines aligned to FIDIC’s contractual time bars, and PMOSS tracking to make sure nothing slips between meetings. The shift was less about adding controls and more about removing delay. Change items now arrive at the board with a recommended decision and a deadline — not just a description of the problem.
The Practical Project Management Methodology (PPMM) treats change management as a decision discipline, not a paperwork exercise. The output of a good change process is not a well-documented register — it is a timely decision the project team can act on. This applies equally to construction contracts, where variations and claims follow standard forms like FIDIC, and to service contracts, where scope adjustments, deliverable acceptances, and modifications carry their own contractual obligations. The PPMM helps MCA programs build a change control process that fits both — giving the right level of authority to the right people, and treating decision latency itself as a project metric worth tracking.
And the cost of slow decisions is not abstract — it is contractual. FIDIC, for example, requires a claim to be notified within 28 days, with the Engineer’s response expected within 42 days of receiving full particulars. Service contracts impose their own clocks on deliverable acceptance, modification responses, and notice periods. In both cases, each day a decision sits unresolved is a day the counterparty accrues potential time and cost claims, and a day your program loses leverage to shape the outcome. Timely decisions are not just good practice; they are contractually material.
On a typical 2-year, $30 million FIDIC construction contract, this is roughly what MCA can expect to absorb for each day a decision sits unmade — through standby costs, idle resources, and time-related claims that compound until the decision is made.
Join IPM for a 45-minute live webinar on May 12 to walk through new resources just published at ipm4dev.org and to introduce an upcoming live series built around the PPMM. The series runs through June through August, with each 30-minute session focused on putting one or more PPMM areas to work — including timely decision-making, the theme of this issue.
Multiple session times will be offered to fit different time zones. Registration details and the full series schedule will be shared in the next mailing — stay tuned.
The PPMM covers change management and nine other project management areas designed for MCC programs. Download it and see what your team could be doing differently — or reach out to IPM to talk through how to apply it to your program.
tkachm@mcc.gov
IPM 