Context:
A major French defence group wanted to bid for an international tender as a joint and several consortium with two smaller foreign companies, and to put dedicated contract management processes and mechanisms in place, applicable to every party to the consortium, to make sure each of them managed its contract properly.
Requirement:
To that end, the client needed a contract management consultant able to understand the practices, processes and tools used within the group, extract the value from them, distil it and adapt it for stakeholders with neither the same level of contract management maturity nor the same culture.
Prime Conseil’s involvement
In the first phase, a pair of contract managers with complementary profiles and backgrounds (a former lawyer and a former engineer), both with sector knowledge in defence and major programmes, were deployed at the client to collect and analyse the existing material, comparing their perspectives in order to deliver an assessment of the current position and proposals for the second phase. In the second phase, building on the work done in the first, a contract manager created the new tools and processes, taking care to gather both the practices and the feedback of the other consortium members on whom these tools were being imposed. More specifically, this contract manager carried out the following:
- Creation of a matrix for identifying, assessing and treating risks and opportunities, including a practical guide explaining how to use it
- Creation of standard presentation packs so that every stakeholder could address contract management in the same way in the dedicated meetings
- Creation of a common contract management plan (CMP), shared with the client, setting out how the contract would be managed between the parties
- Chairing of the first CoCos (contract committees) to consolidate each party’s contractual deliverables.
- Analysis of risks and opportunities at bid stage, both for the individual company and for the consortium as a whole
- Support with contract negotiation and with updating the risk and opportunity assessment
Outcome:
On the strength of this work, the major French group was able to finalise the consortium with the two foreign companies and work with them on the tender response, submitting a competitive technical and commercial offer together, having first analysed the associated risks and opportunities for each party.