Supplier Selection Remains Crucial To Effective Contractor Management

The word "contractor management" will probably not phase you as a experienced project manager, but more so probably if you are new to site planning and project risk management. Nevertheless, even the experienced guys would tell you to proceed with caution as each would have paid their construction management schoolfees on this topic. Contractors can be a very interesting breed of brethren. I have worked with some great ones over the years and I have worked with.... well, not so great ones. The fact is, they are essentially the resources of the project, so they are crucial to its success. Failure to control their actions and manage their preferences will cause your project scope to creep, whilst wasting a lot of energy in trying to fix or rearrange the faults or cancellations that keep on occurring.

So exactly where do you begin if your contractors are rewriting your project schedule on a daily basis, with excuses that they can't locate materials and their subcontractors have gone bust. Contractor management is your baby! Their failure - your responsibility. Their direction - your responsibility. Their success - you know where I'm going.

Let us then have a quick look at how you can get the right people to the right place at the right time. Yup, that is called best project management and it starts with...... PROCUREMENT!

1. Procurement planning is the key. You can simply not neglect this area. Make sure you introduce a well thought out procurement plan for the project. That means thinking long and hard about the criteria (quality, capability, cost) that you want the building contractors to conform to. That way, you will not only get the best responses, but the most suitable suppliers tendering for the work.

2. Once the tenders have been received, be certain to touch base with their referees and do your research on previous projects. Bear in mind, larger isn't always much better. To clarify, the bigger the contractor doesn't mean the more superior the job (and specially in price). Smaller suppliers will often deliver with higher quality in some instances, but you'll want to check out their resource capabilities before you proceed.

3. Investigate their subcontractors. It's crucial and not everybody does this. By requesting this info, you can not only look deep into their suppliers, but also evaluate how much thinking they have invested in their own project delivery plan.

4. Ask them to define their scope of works properly and gain their consensus on a construction time frame with preset deliverables. You will notice that smarter contractors will attempt to maintain an open scope. By doing this, your project costs will blow out as they start raising variations for work that was not included in the specification. Look for the devil in the detail!

All you need to do is stick to the above and your contractor management exercise will be 50% there. You will notice that your project risk will decrease and the probability of your project delivering according to scope, will increase. Off you go!

Are you confident in executing contractor management on your building or construction site? Emmaus Projects is a comprehensive resource for best project management practices and services. Browse their website for more information.