I believe I found it. www.iaccm.com/resources/

This is definitely something that should have greater consideration in my organisation, I have been quite vocal in pushing it. I have worked in teams where particular members have found the lack of bounds extremely stressful as they feel they are crowded out or put upon by the more vocal members, who are equally frustrated it takes so long to get things done. Clarity in defining the roles and responsibilities can often be an enabler.

Agreed, this is a great article and really gets you thinking about the behaviours instilled within your own immediate team. If we cannot get the behaviours and roles clearly specified for our own team members first we are setting ourselves up to fail in the wider team and externally.

Agree - this was quite an insightful article. I've always believed that it should work in reverse - that you should set the objective and then leave it up to individuals to work out how to get there, which is what the article says except for specifying that their roles need to be clear. I believed that if roles were less clearly defined then it gave people scope to expand their remit, however I can see why this can cause confusion.

You are correct, but don't you think that is implied under the 'ultimate objective'? Perhaps you have only experienced part of the statement so far.

If the project is delayed by the Employer... first make sure that there were no delay causes by the Contractor on the previous agreed milestones, for you to be fully eligible for a compensation. Now the tricky part to kick in, is the delay resulting to only warranty extension, which means that all construction, installation and pre-commissioning done? Just ensure that you've all signed-off documents that it's pre-commissioned. if so, your service team will provide an additional cost for extra-warranty coverage and you can lever it as a scope-creep. This is not an issue, if all of your works are completed and no more to come back to do additional works, then you need to add remob to commissioning cost plus the extended warranty cost and get a CO prior to agreement of extension. Don't forget to have your insurance company informed on this extension, as they were notified of previous warranty commitment, not the new one. Hope this serves.

It strikes me that the actual costs of extending the warrantee might be considered.
These may be nil if the delay in the project delays the in service date, and thus the risk of fault.
The onus might be put on the supplier to prove the materiality of additional warrantee costs whatever they might be.

As warranty effort is provisioned to fix bugs of contractor's defects, since the delay is caused by the Employer, the Contractor is entitiled to claim additional cost. Not only is this instance 'due to failure of the employer (customer)', which is not due to cause by the contractor, there could also be a delay in the service start date, which means the plans for service could be impacted. Therefore, I believe the additional cost is justified.

Our service department has actually been able to provide a number for us by unit of what an additional year of warranty costs us. Do you know how much the first year costs you? You could always just submit that as an estimate for year two.

Hi Zarah,

It´s a pleasure to share the information with you and the colleagues of the forum.

So, in Brazil many companies has been implanting CM in their structures but still have many doubts about this area. Sometimes managers asking me about the difference about contract management and project management.
Nowaday I work for a steel company in Brazil and has been implanting with a team a contract management area to help the company to reach their strategic results.

Regards,

Gustavo Procópio
Contract Engineer
Rio de Janeiro - Brazil

Public sector all over the globe. IT and Infrastructure. When mining and Oil and gas pick up would expect more there.
In Australia there is a lot of interest in CM to assist with commercial excellence endeavours.

With the limited text it is difficult to provide a concise response, however based on your text my response would be:

Defined spend is customer focus based on financial spend limitation over the duration.
Work Order will define the deliverable and as such recognise when a deliverable criteria is complete / met and will trigger payment.
Change request will recognise change within the Work Order and will be important as to reciognise completion and hence trigger further payments.
Control and visibility of spend and growth within work orders will be important to the customer and the supplier.

A bit of a guess but it may be due to the accounting package they use which requires the raising of specific orders to trigger the right to get payment.
Some of the big packages are dogmatic in their requirements and which are hard to get around.

I am not familiar with the exact terms of your contract. But a work order and change request are not the same thing, one does not replace the other. The change request comes from your contractor and specifies what is requested as a change, this can be approved or not after evaluation. The work order is an order to start work that normally contains, scope, work methods, safety requirements, etc, but it is not a commercial document, it does not have commercial value, so if the contract will be amended you still need a change request and then a change order to seal the deal. Hope it helps,

We enter into a SOW with our Customers that covers the basic terms and conditions and address the scope and pricing in the Work Order. This provides us the protection needed while giving the professional services department the ability to manage projects without involvement from contracts/legal.

I am also guessing to fill some of the gaps in the information you've provided, but I suspect you have a services agreement of some sort. If you have a contract to complete a specific, once-off project, then you can pretty much define everything to be done in the SoW. With a services agreement on the other hand, you tend to define the services you want and agree a price, but you can't necessarily define in advance how many of those services you want or where or when you want them. We also have a spend over the whole term shown in our contracts - but it is only our 'best guess' based on what we know today and can change at any time.

For example, WAN services are listed in one of our contracts, with various different bandwidths and performance levels, and agreed pricing. At any time we can ask the provider to decommission a site (so that WAN link drops out of the equation and the total price) or connect a new building (in which case they start billing us for that new service, at the price already agreed in advance). We use something like a work order to do that (it's actually a non-standard service request in our case). So, the contract defines all the services we are buying or might want to buy in the future, and we use work orders to say "OK, now we want you to actually do that"...

We typcially describe everything in the Scope (SOW) and that document is the call off from the main master contract. But having said that we use SAP so a "paper" Sow has to be input into SAP in the form of a Service or Work Order for the SAP payables process to be enabled. So like one of your other comments that's probably the reason.

I would hazard a guess it could be for:
1) Paying invoices against an activity as there may be multiple work breakdown structures covered by the SOW
2) Financial approval when invoices come in. Ensuring that the contract owner is happy with the goods and/or services have met the requirements of your business
3) Allows you to track commitment and expenditure vs your budget (SOW work value)

In the US, Texas or New York are largely considered "neutral territory" whereas in Europe, until very recently UK law was considered neutral. I think that may change with the recent political upheaval.

Or try international trade law?

www.jus.uio.no/lm/index.html

In the case of one party proposing Indian law and the other proposing Singapore law, the parties may well choose the law of England and Wales as both Indian law and Singapore law are based upon English and Welsh common law. (Note that there is no such concept as "UK law" as one commentator has suggested below).

However, a party should consider a wide range of factors before proposing a particular governing law and should weigh up the legal and commercial advantages and disadvantages of all the options.

One factor may be the degree of certainty that a contract will be interpreted in a particular way. English law adheres to the doctrine of binding precedence. Some legal systems do not. This could lead to significant uncertainty as to how the law will be applied.

In English law, it may be perceived that the courts allow a greater degree of freedom of contract. Subject to certain exceptions, freedom of contract in English law means that commercial parties are completely free to make disastrous bargains. This illustrates the comparative reluctance of the English courts to interfere on policy or other grounds to rewrite the parties' contracts for them.

For example, in English law it is possible, provided very clear wording is used, to include an exclusion clause that excludes any and all liability whatsoever, even for a deliberate breach of contract. And there is still no recognition of a duty of good faith being applied generally to commercial agreements (but watch this space!). This may or may not be an advantage to you but it remains the case that the courts are likely to give effect to the wording of the contract without imposing their opinions as to what does or does not amount to good faith.


And you may wish to consider the approach of a particular legal system to particular clauses.

For example, in English law, a liquidated damages clause will be subject to the clarification set out recently by the Supreme Court with a subsequent judgment, applying that test, indicating that a freely-negotiated LD clause is likely to be upheld subject to the requirements set out by the Supreme Court. Under UAE law, such a provision would be subject to Article 390(2) of the Civil Code and either party may apply to the court to adjust the agreed amount of compensation so it is equal to the loss. If Indian law were to apply, we would have to consider the effect of section 74 of the Indian Contracts Act 1872.

English law will also recognise an asymmetric jurisdiction clause.

And it may be that the choice of law clause will be reflected in the choice of jurisdiction. So, English law and the English courts. If the choice of courts is to reflect the choice of law, it may well be the consideration should be given to the efficacy of the court system and the technical expertise and other qualities of the judges.

Lots to consider.