Contract Administration
Contract administration involves the task of managing the construction of the Victorian Desalination Plant with focus being on the supply and timely delivery of materials. Within the task of contract administration constant communication with the contractor is crucial in managing tasks within the project scope, time and budget.
Contract administration is important in ensuring best practices are established and maintained by contractors and sub-contractors. Important stages of contract administration are explained below:
System verification
Procurement
The Victorian Desalination Plant is a huge project and the process of procurement must be handled prudently. Automation of the procurement process would reduce costs in undertaking the project since IT systems helps in tracking the supply of materials to the site.
IT systems help in tracking work progress and thus it would be easier to order supplies using IT systems and software designed specifically for procurement thus ordering of supplies can be done orderly and timely and tracking of supplies would be easier.
In undertaking the procurement, it would be advisable to take one experienced contractor who would be responsible for supplying materials. The contractor would be responsible for sub-contracting to other sub-contractors and maintaining quality of materials supplied. The decision to choose one contractor is based on integrity and quality assurance issues (Kerzner, 2009).
Dealing with one contractor is advisable in managing quality assurance of the materials supplied and making the project cost effective. The project manager in consultation with the project assurance manager will overlook into the procurement procedures and ensure project standards such as safety are maintained.
Environmental
Environmental preservation is very important and therefore an environmental impact assessment study is important is establishing the extent of environmental destruction.
This project is big and therefore its undertaking will lead to emission of greenhouse gases and destroy the delicate ecology of the project area. Therefore an environmental impact assessment is important in coming up with a report which analyses the extent of environmental destruction and systems of how to sort these problems.
IT System Integration
The use of IT systems in the management of the project is very important and it is advised that various automated systems are used at vital stages of the project. Software that will be used in the project includes:
Microsoft Dynamics NAV: This ERP software will be deployed in managing financial costing, undertaking payments, timesheet management and preparing financial reports.
Dookmee: This is a storage software system that will be used in managing documents used in the project. This project will have many documents and the software will be deployed in archiving of all documents which include maps, drawings and general documents.
Project Management
This is an important aspect in contract management; within project management planning and phasing the project are important to this process. Through phasing, stages of the project are focussed on and completed and thus contributing overall to project completion.
Within this stage quality measurement, costing and time management are measured and analysed carefully to ensure the project completes within time, budget and scope of the project. Within this phase quality assurance and costing are very significant.
Configuration Management
This stage deals with the management of the design of the project and procedures to be followed in undertaking design administration. The design phase of the project is detailed in documents which show the flow of information through the various project structures.
Design management shows the detailed work breakdown structure and the breakdown flows from the specified project down to the specific task. Information flows between stakeholders in the project right from the owner down to the site employee (Kerzner, 2009). The configuration management document or flowchart is shown below:
Dispute Resolution
The implementation of a project of this magnitude usually causes conflict between contractors, residents of the project area, environmentalists and other interested parties. The best dispute resolution methods would to familiarise all stakeholders on the importance of the project and to hold meeting with stakeholders to iron out any outstanding issues.
Variation Payments
The implementation of this project would take a long time and thus it might be affected by inflation, production delays, weather conditions and other unexpected problems. The effect of these unexpected issues is increase in project costs or reduction in the cost of the project. The variation in payments is a major problem that needs timely and consultative decision to tackle the problem.
When negotiating the contract, it is important to leave a provision for the factoring of increased costs based on agreements arrived at. Variation in costs might make the project to halt and therefore project meetings every three months with the contractors are compulsory (Lock, 2007).
Work Certification
This is the most important document in this project is the final certificate issued by the project controller. The final certificate is issued once all the relevant authorities have assessed the project and certified that the project meets all the quality assurance qualities.
Final certificate is given when the contractor has undertaken all project qualities (Lock, 2007). Once the certificate is issued, the balance of payments are handled between the contractor and the projects owners.
References
Kerzner, H., 2009. Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling. John Wiley and Sons.
Lock, D., 2007. Project management. Boston, MA: Gower Publishing, Ltd.