What Will This Book Do for You? This book provides a survival manual for anyone involved in the crafting, structuring, negotiating, supporting or managing contracts involving commercial transactions of goods, services or both. It blends the practical with general legal principles and highlights best practices for supply chain professionals and anyone else involved, directly or indirectly, with the generation or management of contracts from cradle-to-grave. Even commercially wise and sophisticated organizations can be untrained and unaware of certain gaps and traps in the management of their contracts. This book addresses those pitfalls and provides lessons learned and guidance that are not typically taught at the college or even graduate school level. Experience can be hard and expensive to come by and this book provides a concentrated dose of experience that immediately raises the reader's level of sophistication and awareness for gaps and traps while providing practical solutions to pitfalls that can haunt any organization. Left unchecked, these pitfalls can lead to dysfunction and confusion; both of which can be an expensive proposition in today's competitive and uncertain economic environment. Who Should Use this Book? Supply Chain Management Professionals, Risk Managers, Insurance Experts, Project Managers, Purchasing Agents, Contract Administrators, Executives and any business or technical professionals who are involved with developing, managing or implementing projects, purchases or any complex transaction or procurement where cost, schedule and scope certainty are important. What Does This Book Cover? This book covers how the relationship of the parties affects commercial transactions and addresses the importance of upholding the integrity of the process and the contract by understanding key supply chain best practices. The book focuses on contracting strategies and approaches including how to structure requests for proposals and instructions to bidders as well as key considerations in pricing and pricing adjustments, risk management tools and techniques, the importance of defining the deliverables and outcomes, negotiation strategies and techniques, negotiating warranties and remedies, applying leadership and influencing skills to the process, how to implement sound change management as well as capturing and applying past lessons learned. In addition, special attention is given to the importance of sound "kick off" and "close out", including termination for cause or convenience techniques and other best practices.

This book presents the latest findings relating to behavioral economics and the digital tools applied to contract management. There has been a decisive change in the role of contracts in the past decade, with contracts being transformed from purely legal necessities designed to protect against worst-case scenarios into tools for optimizing ongoing and mutually profitable business relationships with customers. There is an increasing emphasis on tight contracts, where time-risk and additional costs are passed on to the prime contractor, who may suffer heavy penalties in the event of non-performance. Contracts shape the behavior of the parties involved and as such have a major impact on project success. The contract manager’s goals are to protect the interests of the company and its shareholders by minimizing the company’s financial and contractual liabilities and to maximize its profitability while ensuring end-user satisfaction. The contract is usually written before the design is fully developed, and there is often a mismatch between contractual specifications and what the customer actually wants. Good contract management entails preserving the rights of the contractor by ensuring all parties respect their contractual obligations; providing advice to the project managers and engineering team; preparing profitable amendments to contracts or change requests; maintaining good record-keeping in the event that claims arise; filing notices when necessary; and guiding the project to a profitable conclusion. Like the ancient Chinese game of Go, moves made early in the game (notification of events) can shape the nature of a potential conflict one hundred moves later (arbitration threat). Contract management can also smooth the relationship between partners, allowing well-balanced “don’t-trade-a-dollar-for-a-penny” contracts to be managed through an established process rather than as sporadic events (we cannot claim to be in control of our business if we are not in control of the contracts on which it depends). Managing a contract with a mix of incomplete manuals, fragmented information, and poor planning can drive companies to “reinvent the wheel.” Contract management promotes a three-phase sequence to streamline information flows across the contract lifecycle, from the bid phase to performance, project closeout, and final payments.

The focus of this manual is not what provisions to include in a given contract, but instead how to express those provisions in prose that is free ofthe problems that often afflict contracts.

Almost 80% of CEOs say that their organization must get better at managing external relationships. According to The Economist, one of the major reasons why so many relationships end in disappointment is that most organizations 'are not very good at contracting'. This ground-breaking title from leading authority IACCM (International Association for Contract and Commercial Management) represents the collective wisdom and experience of Contract, Legal and Commercial experts from some of the world s leading companies to define how to partner for performance. This practical guidance is designed to support practitioners through the contract lifecycle and to give both supply and buy perspectives, leading to a more consistent approach and language that supports greater efficiency and effectiveness. Within the five phases described in this book (Initiate, Bid, Development, Negotiate and Manage), readers will find invaluable guidance on the whole lifecycle with insights to finance, law and negotiation, together with dispute resolution, change control and risk management. This title is the official IACCM operational guidance and fully supports and aligns with the course modules for Certification.

This ground-breaking title from the world s leading authority on contemporary contracting best practices, the IACCM (International Association for Contract and Commercial Management) delivers a lively and practical complete insight into the contracting process which is useful in both business and personal life. Contracts are the language of business, and this book gives readers the essentials that can make a difference to any deal, no matter how big or small. Designed for the non-contract business professional, this book takes project managers and other professionals through the basic process and gives them a road map to improved results, increased value, and successful outcomes In this book you ll find sensible guidance and approaches to ensure business success. Case studies showing you what can go wrong and what can go right -- bring theory into the real world. Checklists give confidence and enable you to be certain that you have asked and answered the right questions as you go through any deal. This real-world approach demonstrates the value of effective contracting. This is not dry, academic prose. It is compelling and dynamic advice and tools to manage business relationships for both buyers and sellers.

Contract management is a key management skill, yet it is underplayed in most organizations, which usually default to project management skills as a proxy for contract management skills. Whilst project management skills are equally essential, they are not the same thing. Contract Management looks at the wider contract management picture from an industrial-commercial perspective, and helps set-out typical structures and processes that assist the contract management task. The author uses diagramatic representations to depict complex ideas. Contract Management includes "learning points" in each chapter, looking at handling problems, procedural changes and enhancing commercial performance.