One of the major barriers to the widespread adoption of mass timber as a material is lack of knowledge. This lack of knowledge further promotes issues like high production and construction costs. The construction industry in the United States has been reluctant to accept mass timber as a new technology owing to these higher initial costs. Consequently, the most critical factor affecting the selection of a construction material is its cost performance. A successful construction project is governed by its cost performance. Although, the cost performance of a project can be affected by cost overruns and change orders. These project costs can be optimized by reducing the time. Owing to its prefabricated nature, mass timber construction can cut down time. While change orders negatively affect the time of a project, there is a need to understand their impact on mass timber construction. This study analyzes the impact of change orders on the cost performance of mass timber construction projects. The expected deliverables are to quantify and understand the most common causes of change orders in mass timber projects. The researcher believes that this study is a steppingstone toward the widespread adoption of mass timber as a construction material. Project data was collected for 34 projects from General Contractors around the country. Pearson’s correlation, descriptive statistics, and ANOVAs were used to analyze the data collected. This study observed the relationship between the mass timber scope and the mass timber change orders. Along with that the project delivery methods and their impact on the construction costs was studied. The author believes a more widespread adoption of mass timber is beneficial through project team integration and reduction of change order costs.
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