Context:
A French energy group wanted the support of an experienced contract manager to manage performance of a design and build contract for a renewable energy production plant.
Requirement:
The client already had a few contract managers and some early good practice in contract management, and was looking for an experienced profile, operational quickly, able to work in tandem with the project manager. Another objective was to use this contract as an opportunity to introduce new tools and best practices across the group and its various subsidiaries.
Prime Conseil’s involvement
An experienced contract manager with more than fifteen years’ experience of major projects, FIDIC contracts and EPC contracts in the nuclear and renewables sectors was mobilised. Over the two years of construction on site, he was able to:
- Begin with an analysis of the various contracts (client, end client, suppliers, partners, and so on) and report back to the operational teams through a “contract awareness” pack and presentation designed to make every project stakeholder aware of the content of the contract and of the rights and obligations it creates, as well as of its risks and opportunities
- Adapt the existing tools for risk and opportunity analysis, correspondence tracking, reporting and claim management to make them more interoperable, easier for operational staff to understand and, above all, to save time for every stakeholder
- Provide day-to-day monitoring of the project and of how risks and opportunities were evolving, while also anticipating risky contractual situations and dealing with the project’s uncertainties and unknowns
- Draft contract amendments, claim letters and various requests (EoT, change), working with the project’s and the site’s legal, technical and operational contacts
- Handle contract management across the whole subcontracting chain (supplier contract management), and in particular monitoring of deliverable quality and claims on time and quality
- Work with various internal contacts on strategies for negotiating contract amendments and claims in the light of what the contract allowed
- Carry out a continuous lessons-learned exercise to contribute to the ongoing improvement of contract management at the client
Outcome:
The project, initially due to run for 18 months, was delivered in 24 months, and the negotiation of contract amendments (both on time and on cost), together with the optimisation of the supplier contracts, made it possible to complete the project within the client’s target operating margin, a genuine success for a project of this scale involving both technology risk and weather uncertainty.