Right now, on some job site, a change order is sitting on a superintendent's clipboard waiting for three signatures. A lien waiver needs to get executed before the next draw request goes out. A subcontractor agreement is unsigned because the sub is across town on a different project and the paperwork is back at the trailer.
This is Tuesday in construction. And all of it costs more than it should.
Construction doesn't just use agreements. It runs on them. Signatures aren't formalities here. They're what unlock payments, authorize scope changes, and protect lien rights up and down the chain. When signatures stall, draws stall, subs don't get paid, and projects lose days they can't get back. When documents go missing, the legal exposure is real.
Most construction companies have adopted eSignature tools by now. The tools work. The problem is they were built for people sitting at desks in climate-controlled offices, and construction has never worked that way.
This isn't an office workflow
Standard eSignature: someone at a computer prepares a document, sends it to someone else at a computer, they sign it, it gets filed. Clean. Linear. Lovely.
Construction breaks this in the first five minutes.
The person who needs to sign that change order is standing on a roof. The sub who needs to execute a lien waiver is driving between two sites with his phone mounted on the dashboard. The project owner who needs to approve a scope change is unreachable until 7 PM. Documents routinely need three, four, five signatures from people who are never in the same zip code at the same time, and the urgency is constant because unsigned paper holds up money.
Three things matter here that most eSignature platforms handle badly: mobile signing that actually works from a phone on a dusty job site, multi-party routing that moves documents through GC-to-sub-to-owner chains without someone in the office manually forwarding at each stop, and pricing that doesn't penalize you for having a busy quarter.
The three documents eating your budget
Change orders are the most frequent. Scope changes, material swaps, timeline shifts, unforeseen conditions. Every project generates them, and each one needs signatures from multiple parties. A mid-size builder running 15 to 20 active projects might push through 30 to 50 change orders a month. At per-envelope pricing, that's a real line item. And it scales with project volume, so your eSignature bill spikes exactly when your team is too busy to deal with administrative headaches.
But the operational drag is worse than the dollar cost. A change order that takes three days to get signed because the sub is on another site and the paperwork has to bounce through the trailer is three days of ambiguity about scope, cost, and schedule. Multiply that across every CO on every project. That's not an admin problem. That's a velocity problem.
Lien waivers are the most legally loaded. Conditional and unconditional waivers at every payment milestone: progress payments, final payment, retention release. They're the documents that keep everyone's payment rights intact through the chain. A missing waiver can hold up a draw, create mechanic's lien exposure, or show up like a ghost during closeout and stall final payment for weeks.
Getting them signed isn't the hard part. Tracking them is. Which ones are outstanding? Which ones came back? Can you pull the executed version in 30 seconds when the title company calls? Most builders manage this in spreadsheets or paper files, and it works, right up until the moment it spectacularly doesn't. And when a lien waiver falls through the cracks, the consequences are wildly disproportionate to the effort it would've taken to track it properly.
AIA contracts and sub agreements take the longest. AIA standard forms (the A101, A201, their cousins) are the backbone of how construction gets contracted. Multi-page, multi-party, and traditionally signed in wet ink because "that's how we've always done it." For the record, the legal requirement for wet signatures on these is largely a myth. But the tradition persists, and it adds weeks to project kickoffs that didn't need to be weeks long.
A GC working with 15 to 30 subs per project is executing that many agreements per project. Each one has insurance certs, scope definitions, payment terms. Getting these done efficiently isn't paperwork. It's how fast a project can actually mobilize.
Do the math. It's probably worse than you think.
Here's the exercise most construction companies haven't bothered with: add up your total signature transactions across all projects in a quarter. Then multiply by what you're paying per envelope.
A mid-size builder with 20 active projects. Change orders, lien waivers, sub agreements, owner approvals, miscellaneous. Each project generates 25 to 40 signature transactions per quarter. That's 500 to 800 envelopes. At the per-envelope rates most DocuSign plans work out to after overages, you're spending thousands per quarter on a tool that does exactly one thing.
Now think about what you've stopped doing because of the cost. The safety acknowledgments you're still collecting on clipboards because putting them in the eSignature tool would blow out your envelope count. The daily reports you'd love to have signed but can't justify at $8 each. The subcontractor pre-qualification docs that could be digital but nobody wants to go fight for the budget increase.
Per-envelope pricing doesn't just cost you money on what you sign. It costs you capability on what you've quietly decided not to.
What actually matters when you're evaluating
If you're shopping, whether your renewal is coming or you've just hit the ceiling on what your current tool lets you afford, here's what to weight for construction specifically.
Mobile signing that's genuinely field-ready. Not a mobile-responsive website that sort of works if you pinch and zoom. A signing experience that loads on a phone screen, works with dirty hands and one bar of service, and lets someone open a notification, sign, and get back to their actual job in under sixty seconds.
Multi-party routing that runs itself. A change order that needs the GC, the sub, and the owner shouldn't require someone in the office to email it along at each step. It should just flow.
Audit trails that hold up under scrutiny. Construction documents get looked at by title companies, lenders, sureties, and occasionally by lawyers in a room you don't want to be in. The audit trail needs to be complete, timestamped, and bulletproof.
Pricing that makes expansion a no-brainer. If putting more document types and more people into your eSignature workflow makes your operation run better (and it will), the pricing should reward that, not gate it behind a higher tier.
A vendor that speaks your language. The payment flow implications of a conditional vs. unconditional waiver. The nuance of AIA G702/G703 pay apps. The difference between a project that has 8 subs and one that has 80. Generic eSignature companies don't think about this stuff. You need one that does.
Switching is simpler than you'd expect
If you're currently on DocuSign, Adobe Sign, or something similar, the math is straightforward.
Pull your quarterly envelope count across all projects. Get a quote from us based on that actual volume. Compare. For most builders, the gap is large enough that migration becomes an easy decision.
And for construction, migration is usually simpler than other industries. Most builders run standard templates for change orders, lien waivers, and sub agreements. Rebuilding those takes a day. Your subs and field crews don't care what platform the signing link comes from. They care that it loads on their phone and takes less than a minute.
Best time to look is before your renewal hits. Second best is today.