Authorities need to ensure that, during the procurement period, the project team is not just concerned with "deal closing" and that there is sufficient focus on the likely impact of the Contract negotiations on how the Contract will be managed over its life. The early appointment of the future Contract Manager is a key step towards that objective and with planning is straightforward to achieve. However, research by Partnerships UK29 showed that the majority of Contract Managers had not been recruited until after Contract signature. Many of these did not begin their role until six months before the start of the operational period. By delaying the appointment, there is a danger that valuable knowledge from the project team will not be captured, and that the Authority's interests in the planning, construction and commissioning periods will be inadequately represented. Ideally the Contract Manager should be appointed early enough to be involved in the latter stages of the dialogue with the bidders, particularly in relation to the key operational schedules such as the performance measurement system and the Payment Mechanism.
Depending on the size and importance of the Contract this may require the Authority to undertake a fairly significant review of roles, skills and resources within its existing waste management activity. The team may need to be reorganised in order to manage the different phases of the project. It is recognised that this can be a difficult task due to the various levels of demand on resources during the planning and contract phase, and the need to balance resources across departments efficiently and on budget.
The Contract Manager must be fully aware of the way issues finalised after the close of dialogue are resolved. At this stage a lot of time goes into resolving detailed issues many of which will have implications for the contract management period.
If the Contract Manager is not appointed until after the Contract is signed the procurement team will not have the opportunity to pass on information as to why particular positions were negotiated and what impact these will have on contract management. Tensions may arise when these issues need to be dealt with early in the operational period. The procurement team will also miss out on the expertise which the Contract Manager can contribute in evaluating the Contractor's proposals and their acceptability.
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29 Partnerships UK's Report on Operational PFI Projects (March 2006) is available online at http://www.partnershipsuk.org.uk/uploads/documents/doc_70_22-3-2006-13-58-41.pdf