Managing various construction contracts can be a challenging process to coordinate and streamline – especially when dealing with multiple stakeholders and ranging construction project timelines. Relying on disparate contract management methods – such as postal mail, wet-signatures, filing cabinets, emails, shared drives and paper-based negotiations – can waste precious time and energy. With the help of a streamlined construction contract management software, you can centralise and streamline your processes, and capture full contract lifecycle management oversight from contract requests to renewals, especially with the help of integrated eSourcing software that streamlines construction project bidding. Read on to learn how construction contract managers can maximise contract management with the help of key contract lifecycle management software features.
Executive summary
Construction contract managers can receive tremendous pressure from stakeholders to manage contracts efficiently and effectively. Without the right systems in place, managers can experience contract management bottlenecks. Discover how construction contract managers can leverage leading CLM tools to:
- centralise contract management
- streamline sub-contract bidding
- quicken pre-award contract management
- maximise post-award contract management.
Centralised and web-enabled contract management
Construction contract managers in both the public and private sectors hold a tremendous responsibility for coordinating the agreed-upon expectation of ranging stakeholders – including landowners, construction managers, engineers, electricians, architects and construction foremen. Considering the high expectations from construction project landowners and tight deadlines, construction contract managers who rely on antiquated contract management methods can fall behind and be blindsided by undue risk.
Fortunately, a leading contract management platform can electronically centralise contracts with the integration of highly configurable reporting features, graphical dashboards, and milestone notifications – yielding unparalleled visibility from contract requests to renewals. Additionally, a centralised contract lifecycle management platform can seamlessly integrate with MS Outlook and MS Word to help streamline the contract processes – especially when managing various sub-contracts.
Managing contracts with stakeholders from ranging locations and time-zones can be a breeze with the help of a web-enabled contract management suite that grants necessary stakeholders fast access from anywhere in the world with suitable internet access. This can be especially beneficial when coordinating international construction contracts prior to project start-dates. Construction contract managers can retain optimal pre-award and post-award contract management oversight with trackable contract status changes – including contract negotiations, eSignatures and compliance.
Streamlined sub-contract bidding
Construction contract managers and construction procurement managers –especially when seeking sub-contract candidates for unanticipated and short-term construction solutions – can waste valuable time corresponding with prospective construction sub-contract candidates with asynchronous processes, such as email and phone calls. A user-friendly and configurable electronic solicitation and procurement management platform can enable intelligent workflows for RFP management with real-time visibility. An integrated procurement management system includes:
- purchase requisitions
- order management
- budget approvals
- RFx templates
- clause libraries
- bid advertisements
- online vendor Q&A
- electronic bid submissions
- bid evaluation tools
- line-item bidding
- vendor response ratings and scorecards and vendor awards
- document version controls
- electronic signatures
- searching and reporting
- notifications and alerts.
The above-mentioned features enable construction contract managers to seamlessly source a suitable sub-contractor for construction services and construction materials. Construction contract managers can easily communicate and negotiate addendums and seamlessly usher sub-contract vendors into the pre-award contract management process.
Quick pre-award contract management
Construction contract managers can face constant pre-award contract delays – including miscommunication in contract requests, contract requests, contract writing challenges posed by outdated contract templates and clauses, slowed negotiations and approvals caused by paper-based processes and disparate communications, and delayed wet-signatures.
Thankfully, a centralised contract management suite can streamline the pre-award contract process electronically by allowing construction contract managers to request contracts directly from their contract lifecycle management tool, draft new contracts with pre-approved templates and clauses, engage in negotiations and approvals with timestamped changes and tracked statuses, and quickly gather highly-secure signatures with the use of eSignatures.
Effective post-award contract management
Construction contract management can prove challenging when tracking the milestones and key dates of hundreds of contracts with a non-centralised contract repository – including spreadsheets, filing cabinets, and emails. Optimal visibility in the pre-award contract lifecycle saves time, energy and resources. When dealing with ranging contracts – such as unit price contracts, lump sum contracts, cost plus contracts and guaranteed maximum price contracts – with differing milestones and renewal dates, construction organisations can incur unnecessary financial loss stemming from disparate and manual contract management processes. Unclear post-award contract lifecycle visibility can cause construction contract management professionals to waste resources and miss value-driven opportunities in contract renewals.
With the vast array of key dates and obligations within the construction industry, contract management professionals can leverage artificial intelligence to pre-configure metrics and milestones for accurate contract performance assessing and tracking – yielding optimal visibility and alerting contract managers of contract non-compliance. This workflow automation tool can virtually ensure maximum contract compliance. With such oversight, construction contract managers can spend less time tracking and more time managing.
Capitalise on Contract Insight® for construction contract management
Streamline your construction contract management processes with a leading-edge contract management software platform. End-to-end construction contract management begins with Contract Insight from Four.
Contract Insight from Four
Contract Insight is a cloud-hosted (SaaS) or deployed (on-premise) contract management solution. The acclaimed platform is trusted by thousands of professionals for their contract management, legal document management, procurement and sourcing needs. Used by many Fortune 500 companies, Contract Insight gives you real time visibility into your contracts. It doesn’t just shore up your security; it will help you meet contract compliance regulations, centralise your contract management and improve your overall contract administration process.
For more information, contact John O’Brien, CEO at Four Business Solutions, global business consultants and software integrators providing business processes improvements in Finance, Supply Chain and Operations, across a broad range of industries.
