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Commercial Contractors: How to Get Additional Work Approved so There’s Zero Miscommunication

Hey guys, Greg Miller here from Green Pro Painting and DYB Coach.

Today I want to talk to you about additional work for a commercial painting project.

Every single company that you work for, as a general contractor issues a contract as I covered in my earlier video.

Typically, they can be up to 200 pages per contract.

One of the things that they reference in there is what their procedure is for additional work.

A lot of people get caught up with this, and then they are costing themselves thousands of dollars on a job site, this has happened to us before, and we have refined our systems to get better and better as we go along.

Our latest version is something really simple, something that you can go to staples and get.

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Most companies will ask you to have prior authorization for an additional work order.

If you are billing out something that is a specific price, you send them the price for that, they send you the approval, and then you carry out the work.

For this, you need to have a signature of verifying that you’ve carried out this work…

So, one of the things that we’ve done is we’ve added these triple covering copy forms so that we are able to re-distribute those.

Most of the time, on a job site, a superintendent is not able to sign any financial-type documents, so you can only verify field hours.

What we use these particular forms for, are to field hours for our guys that work on a specific thing.

If we are billing by the hour, or also for the job that we may have just done for a price.

We just stamp them with our information, they have 3 copies, there is a white, a yellow, and a pink, the pink is typically left with the job site, the yellow is for our field manager, and the white is for the office.

This way, when we go to submit our billing for an additional work order, everything is all there, we verify the hours, and we do not proceed with work without written approval from the person that is responsible and capable of signing for that particular work.

Usually, on a project, that would be your project manager, not the superintendent. So, if you want to save yourself thousands of dollars on a job, make sure that you follow the contract’s specific process for additional work.

One of the ways to do that is to get one of these carbon copies, field verified hours with the superintendent. Make sure that you have written approval from the project manager on a job.

If you have any direct questions for me, again, my name is Greg Miller from DYB coach, and my email address is greg@dybcoach.com.

Thanks for stopping in, I appreciate you!

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About the Author

As many of you know, my journey has been one of grit, grace, and transformation. At 19, I was a high school dropout, single father, and struggling paint contractor in Michigan. I later moved to Florida, where I faced both personal and professional hardships. With nothing left to lose, I turned to prayer—and was blessed with a relentless hunger to learn. I devoured books, attended seminars, and discovered better ways to streamline and grow my business—even through the Great Recession (and yes, I did hit the wife lottery along the way!). In 2014, I published How To Double Your Business and later sold the painting business, launching a new chapter: coaching others to grow their businesses. For the past 10 years, I’ve dedicated myself to helping business owners scale through the DYB System, while also drawing from frameworks like EOS, Scaling Up, and The Four Disciplines of Execution. Yet something was still missing—something more adaptive, integrated, and complete. Then I found Pinnacle. After months of research and interviews with other Guides, I joined Pinnacle. Their tools and strategies have exceeded every expectation. Now, as a Pinnacle Business Guide, I help leadership teams implement a custom-tailored operating system that draws from the best in the industry—but flexes with your unique business. It’s a dynamic, proven approach to achieve clarity, momentum, and lasting growth. I’m no longer taking on any more 1:1 coaching clients… Instead, I now specialize in working with visionary business owners who are ready to get their leadership teams aligned—around a clear vision, a focused strategy, and an actionable execution plan. With the tools and process I now have as a Pinnacle Business Guide, I help turn alignment into momentum, and momentum into results. If your business is growing—but your leadership team isn’t fully rowing in the same direction—let’s talk.