Monitoring  and  Controlling  Technical  and  Operational Performance of Contracts (Contractors)

Monitoring and controlling of a contract being executed by a contractor should focus on the deliverables in regard to time, cost and quality. Projects are invariably carried out by awarding several contracts and for each contract, the same salient deliverables apply. In this section, we will focus on the performance management of the contract from the owner?s  (your) point of view since you are the direct beneficiary of the deliverables. You should  therefore focus on  the monitoring  and controlling  of  contractor?s deliverables as per the contract, as opposed to getting involved in the nitty- gritty of the planning and implementation aspects which is the contractor?s scope of work.

Effective performance control of a contract encompasses both the pre- contract award and the post-contract award phases. For the purpose of discussion in this section, we refer to the pre-contract award phase as the contract formation phase, and the post-contract award phase as the contract administration phase (by administration, we mean monitoring and controlling of project).

The administrator you choose for contract management must be involved even at the stage of contract formation, so he is aware of all the aspects affecting the contract implementation. In other words, contract administration begins with signing  of  the contract  documents,  continues throughout the performance period and ends with the formal termination of the contractual relationship.