Say the panel is open, the ceiling grid is out, and the job has billed $18,410 against a $24,500 not-to-exceed. Behind LP-2 there is a corroded 100A disconnect nobody knew about.
Now somebody has to walk into the property manager's office and ask for more money on a job that was quoted with a ceiling.
Time and material not to exceed work puts an electrical contractor in a specific spot. The cap is the exact point where a customer stops taking your hours on faith and starts auditing them.
That conversation goes one of two ways, and the difference is not your rates. It is whether you can show what the first $18,410 bought, day by day.
Most contractors treat the not-to-exceed number as a pricing problem. It is a documentation problem. The charge was fair; the explanation was missing.
A line that reads 8.77 hrs will not get a ceiling raised. A line that reads Thu 7:02a–3:48p — pulled and terminated circuits 12–18, second-floor east wing will.
This is the whole method: how to set the number, what to keep outside it, when to send written notice, the exact wording of that notice, what the authorization to exceed has to contain, and what goes on the invoice so nobody has to reconstruct anything. Copy any of it.
What a Not-to-Exceed Cap Actually Changes for an Electrical Contractor
A not-to-exceed cap does not change what you charge. It changes who carries the burden of proof, and it moves that burden onto you at the exact moment you need more money.
Under open T&M, you bill hours and materials as they happen. Under a cap, you bill them as they happen until a number — and past that number you are working for free unless you got written approval first.
The risk is one-sided. If the job comes in under, the customer keeps the difference. If it goes over, you eat it.
That asymmetry is why the ceiling is worth accepting anyway: it is usually the only thing that gets an owner to sign a T&M agreement at all on work nobody can estimate.
Two failure modes cost the money on capped work, and both are paperwork failures rather than pricing failures.
One: you cross the ceiling without written authorization in hand. The work was real, the hours were real, and it is unbillable. Two: you bill right up to the ceiling with hours the customer cannot reconstruct. They do not conclude they misunderstood the job. They conclude you billed to the number because the number was there.The same daily record prevents both. Notice how the crew's note does double duty here — it is your proof that the ceiling needs raising and it is the customer's explanation of what they already paid for.
How Do You Set the Not-to-Exceed Number?
Build the not-to-exceed number from burdened bill rates times realistic hours, add materials with markup, add the items you bill at cost, then add a contingency sized to how much you do not know about the existing conditions.
Then round up and state it as a ceiling, not an estimate. The ceiling is not your best guess — it is your best guess plus the room to be wrong.
Here is the arithmetic on a labeled sample job. Change every input to your own numbers.
Example: Suite 210 tenant improvement, electrical only. Sample bill rates, not a quote and not a real customer.| Line | Inputs | Amount |
|---|
| Foreman labor | 24 hrs × $112.00/hr | $2,688.00 |
| Journeyman labor | 96 hrs × $95.00/hr | $9,120.00 |
| Apprentice labor | 80 hrs × $62.00/hr | $4,960.00 |
| Labor subtotal | 200 hrs | $16,768.00 |
| Materials | $4,200.00 cost + 15% markup | $4,830.00 |
| Permit and inspection fees | At cost, no markup | $340.00 |
| Subtotal | — | $21,938.00 |
| Contingency | 10% of subtotal | $2,193.80 |
| Not-to-exceed ceiling | Rounded up from $24,131.80 | $24,500.00 |
Size the contingency to the unknowns, not to a habit. New construction with approved drawings and clear access might carry 5%.
Work in an occupied 1970s building, behind a hard ceiling, on circuits nobody has a record of, carries 15% or more. You are pricing the odds that demo tells you something.
One thing to be honest with yourself about: the hours line is where caps get set wrong, and it gets set wrong from memory. If your last four similar jobs are on paper timesheets in a truck, you are estimating the ceiling off a feeling.
What to Keep Outside the Cap
A ceiling should cover the scope you can see. It should not cover conditions you cannot see, prices you do not control, or work somebody else asks for later.
Carve these out explicitly, in writing, before signing:
- Existing conditions discovered during demo — corroded gear, undersized feeders, missing grounds, abandoned circuits nobody documented, code violations you are now legally the one who found.
- Code-required corrections that the AHJ demands as a condition of your permit but that were not in the base scope.
- Gear and material escalation on anything with a lead time, plus any switchgear or panel with a quoted price that expires.
- After-hours, weekend, and shutdown premiums requested after the fact.
- Re-inspection trips caused by other trades or by the owner not being ready.
- Standby and delay time caused by others.
- Approved change orders, which by default do not raise the ceiling unless the authorization says so.
Perform authorized extra work against an unraised ceiling and you have a signature for the scope and no room to bill it. Say plainly in the terms that approved change orders increase the ceiling by their approved value.
Sample Not-to-Exceed Clause Language
Below is clause language you can adapt into a proposal or work authorization. Have your own attorney review it before you use it on a real job — this is a starting point, not legal advice.
Time and Material with Not-to-Exceed Ceiling. Contractor shall perform the work described in Section 2 on a time and material basis at the rates stated in Sections 4 and 5. Total billed charges for that work shall not exceed $__________ (the "Ceiling") without Customer's prior written authorization.>
Notice. When Contractor determines that billed and in-progress charges will reach seventy-five percent (75%) of the Ceiling, Contractor shall notify Customer in writing within two (2) business days. The notice shall state charges incurred to date, the work remaining, and Contractor's revised projection of total cost.>
Authorization to Exceed. Contractor shall not perform work that would cause total billed charges to exceed the Ceiling until Customer has authorized a revised Ceiling in writing. Work performed after Contractor's notice and prior to Customer's written authorization is performed at Contractor's election and Customer's charges for that work remain limited by the then-current Ceiling.>
Exclusions from the Ceiling. The Ceiling applies only to the scope described in Section 2 under the conditions described in Section 3. It does not include: (a) work arising from concealed or existing conditions not reasonably discoverable at the time of signing; (b) corrections required by the authority having jurisdiction that were not part of the described scope; (c) increases in the cost of material or equipment quoted with an expiration date; (d) overtime, weekend, or shutdown premium requested by Customer after the date of this authorization; (e) standby, delay, or re-inspection time caused by others. Charges under this paragraph are billed at the rates in Sections 4 and 5 and increase the Ceiling by their invoiced amount upon Customer's written authorization of the specific condition.>
Change Orders. Work authorized by change order is in addition to the scope in Section 2 and increases the Ceiling by the approved value of that change order.>
Substantiation. Each invoice shall be accompanied by a labor record showing, for each day, each worker, the worker's classification, a written description of work performed, hours, bill rate, and amount; and shall state charges previously billed, charges this period, cumulative charges to date, the current Ceiling, and the amount remaining under the Ceiling.
That last paragraph is the one contractors skip and it is the most valuable line in the whole clause. You are writing your own substantiation standard into the agreement, before anybody is angry.
When the dispute comes, "here is the record we agreed I would keep" is a much shorter conversation than "here is what I put together for you."
How Do You Track Hours Against the Cap in Real Time?
Keep one running total per capped job, refresh it on a fixed day each week, and price the work remaining every time you refresh it. You are tracking two numbers, not one: charges consumed against the ceiling, which is what trips your notice obligation, and projected total against the ceiling, which is what the notice has to report.
Consumed tells you where you have been, and it is the number your clause is written against. Projected total tells you whether you are about to have a problem, which is what makes the notice worth reading instead of just filed.
A running total needs four numbers, and you can keep them on one line of a spreadsheet:
- Billed to date — what has gone out on invoices.
- Unbilled work in place — hours worked and materials received since the last invoice.
- Cost to complete — the remaining scope priced at your bill rates, not guessed as a percentage.
- Projected total — items 1 through 3 added up, compared to the ceiling.
Here is what that looks like on the sample job, mid-week four of a five-week schedule, at the same classification rates published above:
| Line | Inputs | Amount |
|---|
| Billed to date | Invoices 1041, 1052 | $14,220.00 |
| Unbilled work in place | 2 F + 22 J + 8 A = 32 hrs ($2,810.00); $1,200 materials +15% ($1,380.00) | $4,190.00 |
| Consumed to date | — | $18,410.00 |
| Cost to complete, base scope | 8 F + 12 J + 16 A = 36 hrs ($3,028.00); $900 materials +15% ($1,035.00) | $4,063.00 |
| Projected total, base scope | — | $22,473.00 |
| Ceiling | Per authorization dated 07/09/2026 | $24,500.00 |
| Percent of ceiling consumed | $18,410 ÷ $24,500 | 75.1% |
Notice what this table can tell you and a percentage alone cannot. Consumed is at 75%, which is the notice trigger, but projected total is still $2,027 under the ceiling.
So the notice you send is not a request for more money. It is a status letter that keeps you in compliance with your own clause and puts the customer on record as informed.
The hard part is item 2. Unbilled work in place means you need this week's hours this week, described well enough to price, and that is entirely a question of whether your crew's hours reach the office before Friday.
If they do not, your running total is always five days stale, and five days on a capped job is where the overage lives. The free labor backup sheet in the T&M Billing Backup Kit is one place to keep the daily rows this total is built from.
When Do You Send Written Notice That You Are Approaching the Cap?
Send the written notice when billed and in-progress charges reach 75% of the ceiling, or immediately upon discovering any condition that will push the final total past the ceiling — whichever comes first.
The habit of writing a threshold into the contract is borrowed, not invented. FAR 52.232-7, the federal payments clause for time-and-materials and labor-hour contracts, requires the contractor to notify the contracting officer when it has reason to believe that the hourly rate payments and material costs accruing in the next 30 days, added to everything already accrued, will exceed 85 percent of the ceiling price. The same clause says the government is not obligated to pay anything above the ceiling unless and until a contracting officer raises it in writing.
Federal work uses 85 percent with 30 days of look-ahead. On short commercial jobs, 75 percent of what you have already consumed gets you to the same place sooner, which is the direction you want to be wrong in.
Many public agencies and institutional owners write a notice threshold into their own T&M terms. Read yours before you set your own, and use theirs when it is stricter. Adopting a fixed threshold on private work costs you nothing and makes the notice look like procedure instead of bad news.
Two rules about timing that matter more than the percentage:
Discovery beats the threshold. If demo opens a wall on day two and you find a feeder that has to be replaced, you send notice on day two at 12% consumed. You do not wait for a percentage to catch up to a fact you already know. Notice is not authorization. Sending the letter does not let you keep spending. Under most clause language, and under the sample above, work past the ceiling before written approval is at your risk.That leaves the real dilemma nobody writes about: stop work and you may be in breach of your schedule obligation, keep working and you may be unbillable.
The way out is lead time. A notice at 75% consumed, with the remaining scope priced, is what gives you time to get a signature instead of a decision at the ceiling.
If you are already at the ceiling with work in the ground, put the choice in writing and let the customer make it: hold at this scope pending authorization, or authorize the revised ceiling today and keep the crew on site. Do not make that decision silently on their behalf.
The Notice Letter, Word for Word
Email is fine, and email is better than a phone call because it has a timestamp. Copy this and change the inputs.
Subject: Suite 210 electrical — T&M charges at 75% of authorized ceiling>
Mr. Marsh,>
Per Section 7 of our work authorization dated 07/09/2026, this is written notice that billed and in-progress charges on the Suite 210 electrical work have reached 75% of the authorized not-to-exceed ceiling.>
Ceiling authorized 07/09/2026: $24,500.00
Billed to date (Invoices 1041, 1052): $14,220.00
Work in place, not yet billed: $4,190.00
Consumed to date: $18,410.00 (75.1% of ceiling)
Remaining base scope, priced at authorized rates: $4,063.00
Projected total, base scope only: $22,473.00>
Based on the base scope alone, we project finishing under the ceiling with approximately $2,027.00 remaining. No action is needed on that basis.>
One item does require a decision. On 08/11 we found a corroded 100A disconnect and pitted feeder lugs behind panel LP-2. This is an existing condition, is not shown on E-1, and is excluded from the ceiling under Section 3 of the authorization. It cannot be left in service.>
Replacement is 18 labor hours — 4 foreman at $112.00 and 14 journeyman at $95.00, or $1,778.00 — plus $2,900.00 in material at 15% markup, or $3,335.00, for $5,113.00 total. Adding it brings the projected total to $27,586.00, which is $3,086.00 over the current ceiling.>
Because this is an excluded existing condition, Section 3 allows it to be billed outside the ceiling once you authorize the condition in writing. We are requesting a revised ceiling of $28,000.00, which is that authorization. The attached labor record shows every hour billed to date by day, worker, and work performed, and the change order log shows this item with the date it was found and the drawing reference.>
We will continue on the base scope. We will not begin the LP-2 replacement until we have your written authorization, and we need it by 08/19 to avoid holding the inspection.>
Please reply to this email with your approval or call with questions.
Read that back and notice what is doing the work. Every figure has its inputs visible, the excluded item is tied to a specific section and a specific drawing, and the request is bounded.
Nothing in it asks the customer to trust anybody. It asks them to check the attached record and sign.
What a Written Authorization to Exceed the Cap Has to Contain
An email that says "ok go ahead" is better than nothing and will not survive a GC's accounting department. The instrument needs enough on its face to be processed by somebody who was never on the job.
| Field | Why it has to be there |
|---|
| Reference to the original authorization or PO, by number and date | Ties the increase to a document already in their system |
| Original ceiling amount | Establishes what is being changed |
| Charges consumed to date, with backup attached | The evidence that the first ceiling was actually spent on work |
| The scope or condition that drove the increase | Names the reason so nobody reconstructs it from memory in 90 days |
| Amount of the increase, and the revised ceiling | Both numbers, stated separately — accounting needs the delta, the field needs the new total |
| Rates that apply to the additional work | Prevents a second argument about whether the added scope is at premium |
| Effective date, and whether it covers work already performed | An easy defect to miss. Work done before the effective date can fall outside it |
| Statement that all other terms are unchanged | Keeps the exclusions, rates, and payment terms alive |
| Printed name, title, signature, date | Authority matters. A superintendent may not be able to bind the owner to money |
That effective-date row deserves a second look. If the disconnect got replaced on 08/15 and the authorization is dated 08/19 with no retroactive language, you have a signed document that arguably does not cover the work it was signed for.
Add one line and it is closed: "This authorization covers work performed on and after 08/11/2026, including the LP-2 replacement described above."
Keep the increase and the change order as separate documents doing separate jobs. The change order authorizes scope; the ceiling increase authorizes money. When one document tries to do both, whichever half is weaker is the half that gets argued.
What Goes on the Invoice So Nobody Has to Reconstruct the Cap
A capped invoice often sits unpaid without being disputed at all: the person approving it cannot tell where the running total stands against the ceiling, so it goes in the maybe pile.
Answer that on the face of the invoice with five lines. This costs you thirty seconds and removes the entire reason to hold payment.
| Line | Amount |
|---|
| Original not-to-exceed ceiling (authorization 07/09/2026) | $24,500.00 |
| Approved increase (authorization 08/19/2026) | $3,500.00 |
| Revised ceiling | $28,000.00 |
| Previously billed (Invoices 1041, 1052) | $14,220.00 |
| This invoice | $6,880.00 |
| Cumulative billed to date | $21,100.00 |
| Remaining under ceiling | $6,900.00 |
Behind that block goes the labor record: one row per worker per day, with what got done written out, hours, bill rate, amount. That is the part that answers "three guys for two days, on what?"
If you want to see what a finished version of that backup looks like, there is an annotated sample billing packet with no signup on it. It is the same structure — date, who, what was done, hours, bill rate, amount.
One rate note specific to capped work. The rate on a customer-facing record is your bill rate, never what you pay the electrician.
Keep those two numbers in separate columns in separate documents. A labor record that accidentally carries cost rates hands your customer your margin at the exact moment you are asking them for more money.
Why the Per-Day Note Is What Gets a Ceiling Raised
An hour with no description is an hour a customer can question for free. An hour with a specific description is an hour that costs them something to question, because now they have to say which part of it did not happen.
That is the whole mechanism, it costs you one sentence per worker per day, and at a ceiling it is worth actual money. Compare two rows from the same day on the same job:
| Weak row | Row that ends the question |
|---|
| 08/13 — D. Nguyen — 8.77 hrs — $833.15 | 08/13, 7:02a–3:48p — D. Nguyen, Journeyman — Pulled and terminated circuits 12–18, second-floor east wing; set 6 device boxes in 210B — 8.75 hrs × $95.00 — $831.25 |
| Asks the customer to take your word for it | Asks the customer to check a fact |
A capped job gives a customer exactly two openings to argue, and both are paperwork rather than pricing: work performed without an approved change order, and hours described too vaguely to check. Both concentrate at the ceiling, because the ceiling is where a customer finally reads the backup closely.
Do not argue an unpaid invoice. Answer it with the record — listen, then put the day-by-day backup in front of them.
That only works if the documentation exists, which brings up the part nobody enjoys.
The obstacle: getting the crew to write anything down
This is the real fight, and pretending otherwise wastes everyone's time. A journeyman who has been in a hot ceiling all day is not going to write a paragraph at 3:45.
So do not ask for a paragraph. Ask for one sentence naming what and where — the panel, the circuits, the room, the count. Ten seconds, and it is the sentence the whole capped job rests on.
And say why you want it. "Write down what you did so the customer can't chisel us on work you already performed" gets cooperation. "Write down what you did so I can check on you" gets a blank line.
The crew is protected by that record too. It is the only thing standing between the work they actually performed and a customer deciding the number looks high.
Three things that make it stick on capped jobs specifically:
- Ask at the end of the shift, not the start of the next one. The details are gone by morning.
- Let them reuse yesterday's line and edit it. Most days on a job are a variation of the day before, and re-typing is what kills adoption.
- Show them the packet once. A crew that has seen their own words on the document that got a ceiling raised understands the point immediately, and stops needing to be reminded.
FieldTimesheet prompts for that one line at clock-out with the previous note reusable, and prints the customer-facing packet at bill rate. It has no cap alert, though — nothing will find you at 75%, so the running total above stays a number you keep yourself.
Where Electrical NTE Work Actually Blows the Cap
Ceilings on electrical work do not usually get exceeded because somebody was slow. They get exceeded for reasons specific to the trade, and the ones below account for most of it.
Service calls and troubleshooting. You cannot estimate a fault you have not found. A property manager issues a $2,500 NTE purchase order for "investigate power loss in east wing" — a form of capped work most electrical contractors see constantly.Handle these by capping the diagnostic, not the repair. Bill to find the problem, then report and re-authorize before fixing it. Write the PO as "diagnosis and report, NTE $2,500; repair to be authorized separately."
Existing conditions. Demo is discovery. Corrosion, undersized feeders, missing grounds, aluminum branch wiring, and homeruns nobody documented all appear after the ceiling was set, which is exactly why the exclusion paragraph matters more on electrical work than on most trades. Gear lead time. A panel, switchboard, or transformer with a 10-week lead time and a quote that expires in 30 days is a price you do not control. Exclude material escalation, or attach the supplier quote and its expiration date to the authorization. Crew mix inside a fixed ceiling. A ceiling is a dollar amount, so who you send changes how fast you consume it. Ten hours of foreman time and ten of apprentice time are the same ten hours and very different money.Run capped work at the lowest classification the task and the code allow, and record classification on every row. If a foreman had to be there, the note says why — "coordination with mechanical, inspection walk" — and the row defends itself.
Permit and inspection wait time. Standby for an inspector, or a second trip because another trade was not ready, consumes ceiling on work that produced nothing installed. Name it as billable or excluded in the terms, and log it the day it happens. Prevailing wage and certified payroll. On public work your rates are set and your reporting is fixed, so the ceiling is the only variable you have left. Certified payroll and the customer's labor record have to agree exactly — a classification that differs between the two invites an audit of both. GC-imposed versus owner-direct. These are two different documentation regimes and get treated as one far too often.As a sub on a commercial job, your ceiling lives inside the GC's terms. Notice runs through their process, the increase has to reach a pay application, and retainage is held against the revised ceiling.
Get the increase documented before the pay-app deadline, not before the invoice date. Those are different dates and the second one is not the one that matters.
Owner-direct and residential work is faster but looser. Several states require change orders to a home-improvement contract to be in writing to be enforceable at all — check yours, because a verbal go-ahead may be worth nothing.
NTE vs. Fixed Price vs. Cost-Plus with a GMP
These get used interchangeably in conversation and they allocate risk very differently. The column that matters is the last one.
| Structure | How you bill | Who benefits if it comes in under | Who eats the overage | Best fit |
|---|
| Open T&M | Hours and materials as incurred, no limit | Customer | Customer | Emergency work, unknown scope, a customer who trusts your records |
| T&M with not-to-exceed | Hours and materials as incurred up to a ceiling | Customer | Contractor, unless authorized in writing first | Service calls, tenant improvement, work with real unknowns and a budget-bound owner |
| Cost-plus with a GMP | Cost plus fee, capped at a guaranteed maximum | Varies — often shared by agreement | Contractor | Larger negotiated work with an open-book relationship |
| Fixed price / lump sum | One contract amount regardless of hours | Contractor | Contractor | Defined scope, complete drawings, conditions you can see |
The row people talk themselves into wrongly is the second one. T&M with a ceiling is often sold as a compromise, and in risk terms it is closer to fixed price than to T&M: you took the downside and gave away the upside.
That is a fine trade when the ceiling is set with real contingency and the exclusions are written. It is a bad trade when the ceiling is your best-case estimate with the word "ceiling" on it.
If you want to price the argument itself — disputed lines, write-offs, the invoice sitting 45 days because nobody wants the conversation — you can run it with your own inputs.
The Monday-Morning Checklist for a Capped Job
Nine items. Do them in order and the ceiling stops being a surprise.
- Before the first hour: get the authorization signed, with the ceiling amount, the notice threshold, the rates by classification, the billable-items list, and the exclusions.
- Same day: write the ceiling and the notice trigger dollar amount at the top of whatever the crew or the office looks at daily. 75% of the ceiling as a dollar figure, not a percentage.
- Every day: one row per worker — date, in and out, classification, one sentence naming what and where.
- Every day: log out-of-scope requests as they are asked, including the ones you said yes to on the spot, with the person's name and the drawing or spec line showing it was not included.
- Same day, for anything verbal: send a confirming email. "Per our conversation at 9:20 this morning, you asked us to..." A same-day email beats a memory.
- Every week: refresh the four-line running total and price the work remaining. Move to daily past 60%.
- At 75% consumed, or the day you discover a condition: send the written notice with the figures and their inputs visible.
- Before performing work past the ceiling: get the revised ceiling in writing, with the effective date and the retroactive line if it covers work already done.
- Every invoice: put the five-line ceiling block on the face and the daily labor record behind it.
Item 1 is most of the way there. The kit's work authorization form carries the exclusions in Section 3, the rates by classification in Section 4, the billable-items list in Section 5, and a Section 7 line for the dollar amount at which you stop and get written approval. It is written for open T&M, though, so Section 7 is labeled a good-faith estimate and says "not a cap" on its face. To use it on capped work, write your ceiling amount on that line, strike the word estimate, and paste the ceiling, notice, authorization-to-exceed, and substantiation paragraphs above into the terms.
There is no revised-ceiling field either — log any increase as its own numbered row on the change order log with the authorization date and method. That is the honest version.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does not to exceed mean on a time and material job?It means you bill actual hours and materials as they happen, but total billed charges stop at a stated dollar amount unless the customer authorizes a higher one in writing first. It is a ceiling on the total, not a fixed price and not a discount on the rates.
Can I bill for work I performed above the not-to-exceed amount?Generally not without written authorization obtained before the work. That is the entire point of the clause from the customer's side, and it is why the notice threshold exists — the notice is the mechanism that gets you approval while there is still time to get it.
What percentage of the cap should trigger written notice?Use billed plus in-progress charges reaching 75% of the ceiling, and send it ahead of any percentage the moment you discover a condition that will push the final total past the ceiling. Federal time-and-materials work uses a later trigger: FAR 52.232-7 requires notice when charges accruing in the next 30 days, added to charges already accrued, will exceed 85 percent of the ceiling price. On a short commercial job, 75 percent of what you have already consumed gets you the same lead time.
Does an approved change order automatically raise the not-to-exceed amount?No, unless your terms say so. Write it in: "work authorized by change order increases the Ceiling by the approved value of that change order." Without that line you can hold a signed change order and still have no room to bill the work.
Do I have to stop work when I hit the ceiling?Under most clause language you cannot bill past it without prior written approval, so continuing is working at your own risk. The practical answer is to never arrive there without notice — put the choice to the customer in writing at 75% and let them decide whether to authorize or hold.
How do I prove the hours when the customer says I billed straight to the cap?With a per-day record that names the work: date, worker, classification, what was done and where, hours, bill rate, amount. A bare decimal invites the question; a specific line makes the customer identify which day did not happen, which is a much harder thing to allege.
Should I put a not-to-exceed on a service call?Yes, and cap the diagnosis separately from the repair. Write it as "diagnosis and report, NTE $X; repair authorized separately" so a fault you have not found yet is not being priced under a ceiling somebody set from a phone description.
What if a superintendent approves the increase instead of the owner?Get the printed name and title, and confirm they have authority to approve charges. Many field supervisors can direct work and cannot commit money; an authorization signed by someone without that authority is the kind of defect that surfaces only when the invoice is already 60 days old.