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Change orders, explained
What legitimately triggers one, what has to be written on it, and how to tell a real adjustment from a bid that was thin on purpose.
01The check, step by step
The record is public, free, and the only version that counts
Most people check a contractor by reading reviews. Reviews describe how a company behaved on somebody else’s house. The state record describes whether the company is permitted to take your job at all, and reading it properly takes about a quarter of an hour. Doing it before anything else is part of planning a remodel from the first conversation, not a separate errand you run later.
The Nevada State Contractors Board keeps that record and publishes it; the public
search (the Board spells it the American way, license) sits at
app.nvcontractorsboard.com and costs nothing. Search by
the number when you have been given one, because that tells you who
actually holds it. Then search by name, because that tells you whether
the company you are talking to appears at all. Trading under a name that is not on the
licence is a normal, legal arrangement (a filed fictitious firm name), and
it is also what an operator with no licence looks like from outside. Save the result as
a PDF on the day you read it: status changes, and the copy you saved is the copy you can
put in front of somebody later.
Five fields the record shows you, and what each one settles
- The licence number. The primary key for the transaction: proposal, contract, permit application and invoices should all carry the same one. Nevada requires a contractor’s advertising to include its company name and licence number (NRS 624.720(4)).
- The legal business name. The legal person you would be contracting with. Compare it character for character against the contract and the payee on the cheque, because “Inc” and “LLC” are different legal persons, not stylistic variants of each other.
- Any d/b/a. A licensee may trade under a filed fictitious firm name. If the brand you were sold is not the name on the licence, it belongs here, filed rather than merely painted on a van.
- Status. Active is the answer you want. A voluntary surrender is not automatically sinister, since a sole trader who incorporates surrenders the personal licence, but it means you are reading the wrong record, and a live one should sit beside it.
- Classifications. What the licence actually permits. The field people skim, and the one that decides whether the contractor may legally hold the scope you are buying, meaning the full list of work the contract covers.
Classification and monetary limit decide your scope
Nevada issues classifications rather than one undifferentiated licence: the A classifications cover general engineering (site work, paving, underground pipe); the B classifications cover general building; the C classifications cover the specialty trades, one at a time. Read them against the job rather than against the marketing. A contractor holding a single specialty classification may be excellent at that trade and still not be the entity that can hold a whole-house scope. That decides who is permitted to sign.
Then the monetary limit, which caps the size of a single contract the licensee may undertake. NRS 624.970(2)(a) requires a residential improvement contract to state the classification and the limit, so you meet both again when the paperwork arrives. If your project sits above it, that is a conversation to have before anybody is paid for drawings.
What the bond and the Recovery Fund do, and what they do not
A Nevada licence is backed by a surety bond filed with the Board. A bond is not insurance that belongs to you: it is a fixed sum a surety pays against valid claims, shared among everyone holding a claim against that licensee. Separately, Nevada operates the Residential Recovery Fund (NRS 624.400 to 624.560) for owners of owner-occupied single-family residences, and your contract must carry the notice and informational form NRS 624.520 and NRS 624.600 require, pulled in by NRS 624.970(2)(h). Nothing in a contract can sign that away: NRS 624.970(5) voids any provision requiring a person to waive a right the chapter gives them.
One more place a bond appears moves money. NRS 624.970(2)(g) caps an initial down payment at the lesser of $1,000 or ten per cent of the contract price, unless the contractor has filed a $100,000 consumer-protection bond with the Board or been granted relief under NRS 624.270(5). So “how big a deposit is normal?” is a question about what is on file, not about local custom. Ours is written into what we ask for as a deposit.
The point of the paragraph above
Bonds and the Recovery Fund are recovery mechanisms: for after something has gone wrong, capped, and slow. Neither is a reason to skip the reading you are doing now.
Insurance is asked for, not looked up
Coverage does not appear on the licence record, so this half of the check is a request. Ask for a certificate covering general liability and Nevada workers’ compensation, and ask the agency to send it to you directly. Read three things: the named entity, which should match the licence and the contract; the policy period, because a certificate expires; and whether the described operations match the work, since a policy written around one trade does not quietly widen to cover a structural job. Workers’ compensation is the item most often skipped and the one with the sharpest edge, because it answers when somebody is hurt on your property.
Four things the record cannot tell you
It describes an entity. Your project will be run by people, on a calendar, under a document.
- Who will actually be in your house. Ask which trades are performed in-house and which are sublet, and ask for the sublet trades by name.
- How many jobs that entity is running at once. Schedule risk is the commonest complaint in remodelling and leaves no trace on a licence record.
- Whether the price covers the work you think it covers. Scope disputes are rarely dishonesty; they are two people reading one short paragraph differently. The cure is a written exclusions list.
- Whether the company writes things down. The best single predictor of how month four feels is how much of month one arrived on paper.
Five documents to ask for before you sign
- The written contract, containing every element NRS 624.970(2) requires. A binding agreement exists when both parties sign that document, not when a price is agreed on a driveway.
- A line-item scope with a written exclusions list. The exclusions are the more informative half: a contractor who will write down what is not included has thought about the job.
- The allowance schedule, with a value against each allowance and a note of whether labour sits inside it.
- The draw schedule, tied to stages of construction. NRS 624.970(2)(k) is explicit that, other than the initial down payment, a contractor may not hold more than 100 per cent of the value of work performed at any point, unless a payment-and-performance bond covering full completion has been furnished and its cost included in the price.
- The change-order clause, read before you need it. NRS 624.970(2)(i) makes a change order unenforceable against you unless it sets out all changes in scope and price and you accepted it. There is a longer note on what triggers one and what a fair one looks like.