Keeping projects on-time, on-budget and to a high-quality requires minimal wastage. Whether that waste is materials at the construction level or unforeseen expenses or time at any level; waste is a profit-killer. Opportunities to optimise efficiencies abound across all levels of the project-delivery and are essential to maximising profit and ensuring positive project outcomes. So what does this look like at the Contract Management level?
Getting Started
Becoming familiar with a large contract is a huge undertaking, made harder if amendments and variations alter the original. Harder still if the contracts are only available to be viewed in PDF. Minimising the time it takes to get contract managers familiar with key documents is a key efficiency to ensure success, as it reduces the risk of error and missed opportunity. Generate efficiency by setting your contract managers up correctly from day one, with the following:
- An up-to-date version of the contract – this might seem obvious, but are you able to provide all your team with a constantly updated, powerful search-enabled version of your full contract suite at all times?
- Key clauses flagged with further explanation and links to peripheral materials directly against relevant clauses, with the opportunity for these explanatory notes to be built-upon over time
- Obligation reminders set so that relevant people receive reminder-notifications when upcoming obligations are due
Business-as-usual
When the team are familiar with the contract, managing ongoing obligations across a contract suite can become difficult if a holistic, centralised approach is not adopted. Poor monitoring and compliance reporting can lead to inefficiencies (time spent identifying if obligations have been met, work being completed twice, or catch-up work, auditing and breach-reporting are efficiency-killers). Ensure that delays and obligations don’t cause unforeseen issues with:
- A centralised, fully-filterable compliance dashboard, allowing you to easily cast your eye to current and future obligations, as well as an historical, easily auditable compliance history
Handover
Whether handing over the project to a new phase team, or simply onboarding a replacement when inevitable personnel-change takes place, ensuring an efficient, delay-free handover is a difficult task, as there is often much to do, and little time in which to do it. Give your team, and whoever is taking over next, the best head-start with the following:
- Hand-over notes, detailing opportunities, challenges and historical narrative from the team who have worked on the contract previously – all set against the relevant clauses to provide specific and relevant guidance
- A simple transfer of obligation ownership so that reminders immediately start going to the new team, minimising the time they need to effectively get set up.
There are myriad ways to customise these tools, all of which (and many more) are available when contracts are converted into Intelligent Document Format. Get in touch with us at contact@affinitext.com to discuss how to improve your contract management efficiency!