CM102: Mastering Complete Pre-Award Contract Management

Identify your organization’s structure and responsibilities to ensure strong contract formation. Consult relevant units and record approvals, clarify profit and loss authority, and determine who leads project execution.

Explore how a core project team is formed before contract formation and how a matrix organization assigns contract-formation responsibilities to key roles like project manager, contracts manager, and risk manager.

Identify the legal framework and governing law for contracts, distinguishing common and civil law. Align drafts with the chosen system; cover contract formation, four elements, service templates, and precedence rules.

The contracts team leads bid package development and contract formation, coordinating cross-functional input from engineering, project controls, legal, and insurance. It reviews scope, prepares ITT, and evaluates bids to recommend award.

Plan and draft contracts for RFPs by analyzing scope, timeline, cost, and risk, guiding subcontracting, legal compliance, and ITT package preparation.

Learn how to incorporate flow down requirements from the prime contract into subcontract drafts, allocate risk, customize limits and timelines, and maintain consistent terminology to protect all parties.

Allocate contractual risks between owner and contractor in the invitation to tender (itt), addressing negative risks, changes to scope, indemnities, site conditions, delays, and force majeure.

Define liquidated damages as contractually agreed measure for delay or non-performance, compare common law and civil law, explain penalties versus reasonable estimates, and outline when to include liquidated damages provision.

Explain insurance requirements to prevent gaps, including no exclusions, coverages like third party, professional, and employer's liability, flow-downs from the prime contract, and deductible considerations.

Define bid evaluation and award criteria by detailing commercial and technical factors, both objective and subjective, with scoring basis and weights to ensure impartial tendering and broaden bidder participation.

Forming an ITT package guides bidders through technical and commercial bid requirements, draft contracts, and standard forms, with review points and tendering procedures for complex projects.

Explore tendering strategies—single-stage, two-stage, and negotiated—and compare procurement routes such as lump-sum, design and build, cost reimbursable, and PPP to select the right approach.

Run a prequalification to shortlist qualified bidders for the tender. Assess bidder responses with scoring and knock-out criteria, then issue the invitation to tender to the prequalified list.

Inform bidders about site conditions and bid requirements via a meeting agenda and site visit, ensuring bidders attend, questions are shared, and ITT changes are issued as addenda.

Learn how to receive bids, ensure confidentiality, log bids, and conduct opening, technical and commercial evaluations with a contracts team, while maintaining sealed access-controlled storage and strict closing dates.

Bid clarification meetings clarify bids and resolve questions for bidders in the competitive range. Inform bidders of errors, negotiate terms, and prepare an agenda with internal alignment.

Learn to conduct technical and commercial bid evaluations and scoring, ensure independence between evaluations, and assemble an objective evaluation package for award recommendations.

Assess final bid scores and consolidate technical and commercial results into a recommendation. Draft an executive summary to support the bidder selection and award based on the total weighted score.

Conduct the pre-award meeting after contractor selection to confirm bid changes, review issued for bid drawings, approve substitutions, and align on work plans, permits, and mobilization requirements before award.

Learn how to issue a letter of award by confirming internal authorization, funding approvals, and final bidder selection, ensuring changes are incorporated and contracts are finalized.

Sign off the contract with proper copies, signatures, and authority checks; manage stamp tax, bidder signing order, internal approvals, and post-award regret communications.

Secure bonds, guarantees, and insurance before contractor mobilization. Review coverage limits, 30-day cancellation notices, exclusions, and additional insured status with a checklist, and secure performance bonds before work.

Transfer a contract package from head office to project team, including RFP, pre-bid, bid clarification, pre-award minutes, and NTPs, along with contract copies and logs, so on-site teams track progress.