3.39 Lessons: The majority of lessons of a contract management nature were recorded by the FFG Upgrade and HF Modernisation projects. These projects were contracted in the late 1990s under a contracting template (DEFPUR 101) that did not provide the Commonwealth with a standardised approach to the management of complex technical programs. This has now been addressed with the introduction of the ASDEFCON series of DMO contracting templates.
3.40 Implementation: The FFG Upgrade contract was particularly complex in terms of the need to manage interfaces between a major refit program, life of type extension work and a very considerable combat systems capability upgrade which is the fundamental reason for the project. The FFG Upgrade contract was executed before final contract specifications and statements of work were finalised. A further complication was that the Commonwealth decided, midway through the contract, to reduce the number of ships in the upgrade from six to four resulting in considerable changes to the contract and a Deed of Settlement to reflect the reduction in project scope.
3.41 Unlike the ASDEFCON Strategic Materiel template, the DEFPUR 101 contracting model did not include a standardised approach to the management of technical risks that typically arise in complex developmental and integration projects, such as the FFG Upgrade and HF Modernisation projects. Instead, individual projects developed their own approach. This meant that there was no consistent basis for monitoring the effectiveness of the various approaches. In turn, the DMO's ability to leverage improvements across the organisation to address risks that arose in such projects was limited. The deficiencies in these previous contracting approaches continue to affect the management of these two projects.
3.42 The ASDEFCON Strategic Materiel template now provides a standardised Statement of Work for large scale, software-intensive systems integration activity. This includes a set of mandated system reviews supported by checklists and guidance on the conduct of these reviews.