Course Details
Course Outline
5 days course
Effective Contract Management
- Company objectives
- Commercial awareness
- Commercial management
- Personal relationships
- Vital skills and expertise
- Deciding the right priorities
Understanding the legal environment
- Basic legal principles
- Risks for a valid contract
- Conditions and warranties
- Making the contract
- Offer and acceptance
- Enquiries and tenders
- Statute law affecting contracts
- Defects, negligence and lateness
Drafting the contract
- Drafting starts with effective thinking
- The key objective
- Communication and the barriers to overcome
- The craft of contract drafting
- Closing loopholes
- Defined terms; precise language
- The specific and the general
- Dealing with sub-contractors
- Termination clauses
- Traps for the unwary
Risks, rules and relationships
- Risk analysis
- Managing change during the operation of the contract
- Political, environmental and physical factors
- Financial and technical risks
- Pre-contract risk planning
- Post-contract risk management
- Off-loading or sharing risk
Some contract scenarios
- The enquiry and the bid
- Time and materials
- Fixed price
- Limits of liability
- Pricing or associated costs
Contract terms and conditions
- How to deal with the ‘small print’
- Consortia, joint ventures and collaborations
- Choices of law and jurisdiction
- Force majeure and its implications
- Time is of the essence
- What’s on the back of the purchase order
- Ways of arguing over terms
Effective administration techniques
- What is the purpose of the contracts function?
- The extent of its involvement; what is needed?
- The culture of the enterprise
- Terms of reference
- Early warning systems
- Some maxims of contract administration
- Post mortems
- Getting known and respected
harpening your negotiating skills – getting the most out of contracts
- Who are the best negotiators?
- Planning to negotiate
- What and how to negotiate
- Essentials of negotiation
- The principled negotiator
- Negotiating in teams
- Getting to win / win
- Closing a deal
How to resolve disputes by mediation
- Why mediate?
- When to mediate
- Skills of a party at mediation
- How to achieve a successful outcome at a mediation
How to obtain legal remedies
- The advantages and disadvantages of litigation and ADR
- Choosing the appropriate method of redress
- Obtaining redress while the contract is operating
- Confidentiality
- Obtaining a final solution
