Managing Contracts within a Configurable Project Controls Platform
Compliance, co-operation and control: three critical components of successful contract management. Trust RPC to help you to achieve all three in one out-of-the-box software solution.
The secret to successful contract management is a system that allows you to set up and forget. A solution that enables integrated and configurable project controls that encompass your contract clauses so that you have no need to keep referring back to the contract terms will help to ensure contract compliance and avoid disputes and penalty clauses all within the wider contract of project or programme success.
With a project controls platform based on Oracle Primavera Unifier, RPC has developed contract management solutions for both NEC4 and FIDIC contracts. Integrating with Primavera P6 to enable automated schedule and progress updates, these contract management solutions generate workflow processes, notifications, reminders and more to help everyone involved on a project to keep on track and gain early warnings when cost, schedule or resources begin to slip.
The solutions can be rapidly deployed out of the box with Unifier Accelerator to get you up and running in the shortest possible time, but they are also configurable to meet the unique needs of each contract, project, programme or portfolio. Users will gain easy project and cross-project reporting to drive better decision-making and real-time status updates and graphic dashboard snapshots as colleagues update in the field.
We were delighted to be invited by Construction Buzz for our Solutions Director Nathan Lambert to take part in their recent webinar alongside Oracle’s Master Principal Solution Consultant, Huw Cole, and Session Moderator Jeremy Glover, Partner at Fenwick Elliott LLP. The session was a lively panel discussion exploring how to ensure that an accepted programme is in place, how to issue compensation event notifications on time, how to prevent disallowed costs and more – but primarily how to avoid ending up in a dispute or litigation at the end of a project.
What sets the NEC contract form apart is the over-riding aim to encourage parties to act in a spirit of mutual trust and cooperation and to promote collaborative working and this is facilitated and supported by the Unifier NEC4 solution with its built-in workflows for notifications, compensation events, early warnings and more. All interested parties having access to clear, concise and accurate data across all elements of a project at all times makes sure that there are no surprises, that all decisions are backed up with evidential data, that communications are traceable and that all information is auditable, generated automatically as far as possible to minimise potential for human error and, crucially, a reliable source of the truth.
FIDIC is no different in terms of these requirements – although a different set of contracts drafted by a different governing body, still the core ‘Golden’ principles of the contracts remain that they should be clear and unambiguous, have a fair and balanced risk allocation, give reasonable time for parties to perform their obligations and exercise their rights and should refer to a Dispute Board when required in order to try to avoid arbitration or litigation.
Fundamentally, if things are properly recorded it minimises scope for dispute later on and using a software solution that can manage your contracts, schedule, progress, costs, resources, risk and more is a significant step forwards in this regard.
We’re very excited about the potential of this powerful project controls platform to transform outcomes across a wide range of projects and industries, whichever contract form you have in place. We’ve already deployed the solutions with clients in the transport and industrial manufacturing sectors and have seen how fast the benefits can be realised.
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Streamline your contract management processes
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Quickly and easily improve compliance, co-operation, and control in NEC4 and FIDIC contracting
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Implement a flexible full project controls solution
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Gain connected contract, cost, change, schedule, workflow, and document management
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Unify your processes and data to improve contract and project outcomes
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Access information hidden in spreadsheets and attachments
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Understand trends and lessons learned
It’s so much more than just a contract management point solution, but is built on the Unifier Accelerator base configuration as a complete project and portfolio level controls solution with integrated cost, contract, programme, workflow and document management capabilities. The solution offers ultimate flexibility to configure the system to specific customer needs alongside pre-built, out-of-the-box configuration, allowing for fast deployment and rapid return on investment.
Get in touch today if you would like to find out more about how RPC can help you to achieve all this and more.
