variation order
noun · Anordnung
German construction law gives the employer something an English contract must draft for itself: a statutory power to order changes. He first requests the change and the contractor must offer a price; if no agreement is reached within thirty days the employer may order the change in text form, and the contractor must carry it out so far as it is reasonable, § 650b BGB.
Which translation, when
Why
Variation order corresponds to the Anordnung of § 650b BGB, and the German construction has no direct English counterpart because it is statutory rather than contractual. In an English building contract the employer can vary the works only so far as a variation clause lets him, and everything from the procedure to the valuation is a matter of drafting. German law supplies the mechanism itself, in two stages. First the employer requests a change, either to the agreed result of the works or to something necessary to achieve that result, and the parties are to reach agreement; the contractor is obliged to submit an offer covering the increase or decrease in remuneration, so far as making that offer is reasonable for him, and where the change requires planning that the employer owes, the obligation only arises once that planning is provided. Second, if agreement is not reached within thirty days of the request, the employer may order the change in text form, and the contractor must carry it out unless doing so is unreasonable for him, with the burden of establishing internal grounds of unreasonableness on the contractor. The price follows under § 650c BGB, which values the additional or reduced work by the costs actually necessary plus appropriate surcharges, and lets the contractor include eighty per cent of the increase quoted in his offer in interim applications while the amount is disputed. Either stage can be taken to an interim injunction. In site vocabulary the resulting document is the Nachtrag, and Nachtragsmanagement describes the whole practice, so a translation should keep Anordnung for the statutory act and Nachtrag for the paperwork.
Typical mistakes
- The power to order changes is statutory, so a German employer has it even where the contract contains no variation clause.
- The order requires text form and a preceding request with a thirty-day window, so an instruction given on site without that sequence is not an Anordnung under § 650b BGB.
- Nachtrag names the resulting document and Anordnung the act, so using one for the other confuses the instruction with the paperwork.
What matters
Managing changes on a German site: the sequence should be documented, a request first, then the contractor’s offer, then an order in text form after the statutory window, with the price adjusted on actually necessary costs.
What the machine misses
Automatic translation renders variation order as Variationsanordnung or Änderungsauftrag, neither of which German construction law uses, and the statutory act is the Anordnung of § 650b BGB following a request and a thirty-day window, with the price adjusted under § 650c; the invented wording also suggests the power depends on a contract clause, which in Germany it does not.
Examples
| a variation order | eine Anordnung |
| the employer requests a change | der Besteller begehrt eine Änderung |
| adjustment of the remuneration | die Vergütungsanpassung |
| a variation account | ein Nachtrag |