Contract Management Overview

Contents

Contract Management is a multi-user, multi-project application that provides a centralized way to store, organize, and track project information that enables users to keep contracts on time and within budget.

Record Contracts and Purchase Orders:

Contract Management enables you to record key information about contracts and purchase orders (POs) in the following documents.

Contracts and Purchase Orders: Use these documents to record the basic information.

Cost Worksheet: Use this document to track contract costs and categorize contract or purchase order amounts using cost codes for a detailed breakdown of the component costs for your project. You can distribute the value of any contract, purchase order, or change to any number of cost codes.

Invoices/Requisitions: These documents are generated from contracts/purchase orders (POs), and then sent for payment approval. The amounts are posted to the Cost Worksheet to track actual costs.

Materials Delivery: Use these documents to record the date and quantity of materials received and noted against each contract or purchase order. Then incorporate these and approved changes into requisitions for up-to-date payment amounts.

Companies: These documents contain physical and electronic addresses and communications numbers for all individuals with whom you interact. The module uses this information when you send any contract, purchase order, or other information to those individuals.

Trends: These documents are an expectation of future costs (estimated revisions). Use trends in conjunction with the Cost Worksheet (where you can modify column headings to accommodate the way you handle costs) to track possible cost increases for the project.

Track Contract Changes:

After participants accept a contract or purchase order and work begins, any changes resulting from changed specifications or changed conditions will affect the initial contract. You can use the following to help track the changes.

Change Management: Use these documents to manage project modifications due to changes. You specify which change documents are created, when they are created, and where they are calculated on the Cost Worksheet. By recording all necessary contract, contractor, and cost data early in the change process, you can evaluate the effect of the change on all contracts involved and see the current status of the change at a glance.

Markup: This functionality provides a way to manage overhead and profit by adding markup values to change documents. The module can calculate overhead and profit automatically, and add additional costs to change orders and proposals. You can set default values for overhead, profit, and any other markup categories you create. Typically you will collect all proposals from committed parties, and then roll the costs and codes of each document to create a quote to the customer or owner of a project. With markup, you can add your overhead and profit prior to submitting the quote.

Daily Reports: These documents provide a record of daily activities and conditions. Use these reports to record conditions observed in the field, such as soil, rock, or underground utilities that were not moved correctly, as well as to track and communicate the potential effect of these recorded conditions in a timely manner. You can also include underway activities from Contract Management module schedules that are linked to the project to see where the work is taking place on that report day.

Telephone Records, Meeting Minutes, Correspondence, Requests for Information (RFIs), and Notices: Use these documents to record information that may affect both the submittal and change processes. For example, a change in condition may result in meetings, phone calls, notes, letters, and correspondence that lead to a formal contract change.

Change Orders: These documents result from changes in the scope of work, site conditions, or schedule delays. You can post costs associated with changes to the Cost Worksheet so you have a total financial picture of past events and projected future costs. With this view, you can measure the impact of each change order on any contract or purchase order.

Track Submittals:

Submittals: These documents include contract drawings, sample materials, and permits that need approval. Submittals help you ensure contract compliance by tracking who received what and when they received it.

Daily Reports, Telephone Records, Meeting Minutes, Correspondence, RFIs, and Notices: These documents also support the submittal process. For example, during a submittal cycle a reviewer may reject a submittal; as a result, the project team may have meetings and exchange phone calls, letters, and correspondence to clarify the requirements for resubmittal.

Drawings and Drawing Sets: These documents maintain a list of project drawings, facilitate the dissemination of these drawings to other parties, and provide information about the status of revisions. When you add distributions to drawing sets or create revisions, an entry is made in the Transmittal Creation Queue for each contact on the distribution list.

Transmittals: These documents accompany documents, such as submittals and drawings to create a permanent record of the actions taken. Submittal items and drawing revisions are automatically placed in the Transmittal Queue; you can add any transmittals in this queue to the database and print them for recipients on your distribution list. The module can quickly generate transmittals, or you can customize your own.

Dunning Letters: These documents remind participants of overdue items such as submittals and drawings. Contract Management can quickly generate dunning letters, or you can customize your own.

Reports and Forms: These documents provide quick and accurate project information in various formats. The flexible reporting feature produces reports that summarize when items such as submittals are due, who received what and when, what has been approved and what is pending, and how many days an item is overdue.

Use the Cross-Document Tools:

The Issues feature cross-references and links documents from any Contract Management module log to issues you define. You can link documents to issues directly as you add records to the documents, or you can link documents to issues automatically based on keywords such as underground, electrical, or some other item that may be related to a problem or other situation. The module then assembles the documents for review in a fully organized, indexed list so you can easily trace the sequence of actions taken, saving hours of work.

The inbox stores items sent to you electronically by other participants. You can also use this feature to communicate quickly with other project team members by sending documents related to submittals and changes.

Sample Projects:

Contract Management includes several sample projects, each set up from the perspective of a different team member in a construction project: general contractor, owner, subcontractor, and designer. DEMO is the sample general contractor project; HOSP and OFFC are from the owner and subcontractor perspectives, respectively. Another sample project, DESIGN, is provided to demonstrate how a designer tracks drawings during design review. These projects are included as templates on which you can base your own projects.

The sample projects relate to construction work that must be completed for Philadelphia County. Design Group is the architect/engineer; ACME General Contractors is the general contractor; A-1 Construction Management is the construction manager; and Stresson Industrials is the subcontractor to ACME for concrete work.

The information included in the sample projects is just an example of what is possible. Most projects contain more requisitions, change documents, transmittals, and submittal cycles than the examples shown.

Allentown (New Hotel Construction): Contains project data from the owner's perspective for the construction of a new hotel. The value of the contracts is $2.675 million.

DEMO (School Addition – Automotive Center): Contains project data from the general contractor's perspective, manages shop drawings and submittal items, tracks project issues, documents the change process, and records daily progress in the construction of a school addition. This addition is a masonry structure with brick siding that houses an automobile and light truck service center. The value of the contract between the owner and ACME General Contractors is $10 million.

ENG (Office Building): Contains project data from the designer's perspective. The designer manages shop drawings and submittal items, tracks project issues, documents the change process, and records daily progress in the construction of an office building.

HOSP (South General Hospital Addition): Contains project data from the owner’s perspective regarding the construction of a new hospital wing for Philadelphia County. A-1 Construction Management is the construction management company awarded this job. The value of this contract is 9 million British pounds.

OFFC (Phila Office Building Addition): Contains project data from the subcontractor’s perspective for concrete work required for renovations to City Hall. The subcontract is between ACME General Contractors and Stresson Industrials. The value of the subcontract with Stresson is $1.4 million.

9R27L (Runway 9R Reconstruction): Contains project data from the engineer's perspective for concrete work required to reconstruct a runway for the Atlanta airport. The contract is between APAC-MSSM Inc. and the city of Atlanta. The value of the contract is $52,174,655.36.