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Contracts Management - post award
Course Description
Overview
The contract has been awarded, the handshakes have taken place and everyone’s happy. Now we can sit back and relax, right? Wrong – this is just the beginning, and the hard work is about to start. Managing a contract is a key skill and if done well, will deliver real benefit to a business. Conversely, if done badly, it can result in financial and reputational loss, disappointment and missed opportunities. This short course will focus on the methods, skills, activities, and techniques that will guide you in achieving good outcomes from your contracts.
What You Will Learn from This Course:
• Why good post-award management is critical
• The key activities in managing contracts
• How to prepare for post award contract management
• Methods for improving contract performance
• How to deal with common issues including slippage, scope creep, cost growth, poor reporting and more
• The pros, cons, and risks of the most common contract types
• How to handle claims and disputes
• Key “soft” skills to help you solve problems and get the best out of people
• How to close out a contract successfully
• Where post-award activities fit into the contracts & procurement cycle
Why Should You Attend this Course?
Many project and other business scopes are now executed via contracts. This allows organisations to meet their objectives by using resources outside the company boundaries, where suitable skills and knowledge often lie. Following successful pre-award and award stages, the contract must be managed well, post award, to gain the best results.
This course will give you theory, process, techniques, insights, and ideas to help you do this. In addition, we will learn how to deal with common problems that arise, such as poor contractor performance, poor communication, uncontrolled change, conflict, slippage, claims and disputes. Starting with a brief recap of the whole contracting process, we move on to focus on the key activities involved in managing the contract post award. This covers every step from pre-handover to contract closeout and will help delegates to ensure that the contract delivers the results required, that the relationship between contract parties remains good and that difficulties and adverse events can be overcome. Importantly, we will learn how to manage risk and change, and how to get the best out of everyone involved.
Delegates should emerge from the course with a high degree of knowledge and a good set of tools and practices to apply to real-life contracts.
The course is full of practical techniques and examples, with the intention of turning knowledge quickly into benefit. The worked examples, case studies and exercises are intended to make it easier to apply the knowledge gained.
Finally, the instructor will include opportunities to discuss the real-world problems, issues and questions that are affecting delegates in their own working lives, so that improvements and solutions can be implemented as soon as attendees return to their desks. Often, helpful advice can be gained from the experience of other delegates, and the course setting provides opportunities to do this.
Who Should Attend This Course?
• Contract holders
• Contract & procurement team members
• Project managers
• Project team members
• Project Management Office (PMO) staff
Course Length
2 days
Course Content
An interactive mix of theory, case studies, group discussion and activities will be used to illustrate and apply the methods, tools and techniques required for successful post award contract management. The following topics will be covered:
Introduction
• Why contract management?
• Benefits of doing it right and problems with doing it wrong
• Overview of overall contracts & procurement cycle
• How post award management fits in
• Relationship to project management
• Procurement strategies, including project and package
• Common contract types – pros, cons, and risks
• Key roles and responsibilities
• Interface to pre-award stage
• Preparation for contract management phase
• Handover from contract award
Post award management
• Process overview, including inputs and outputs
• Initiation stage
• Planning stage
• Delivery stage
• Change management
• Risk management
• Handling premature close
Closeout
• Process overview, including inputs and outputs
• Contract closure
• Handover and transition
• Operations and support
Key skills
• Relationship and stakeholder management
• Communication
• Performance management
• Negotiation
• Conflict management
• Leadership
• Documentation and record keeping
Problems
• Common issues and risks, and how to deal with them,
• Disputes
• Claims
• Completion, sign off and payment problems
Case Studies
• Presentation of real-life examples and case studies of how contracts are managed, post-award
Practical Exercises
• Worked examples, where delegates participate in groups or teams to solve problems in some fictitious but realistic situations.
Summary And Next Steps
• Summary
• Things you can do next
• Reference material
