Whilst the primary focus of contract management will normally be the monthly cycle of Contract Waste being delivered, the services being provided and the services being paid for there are other important contractual processes that will be of significance from time to time. Several of these could result in an increase to the Unitary Charge or a dilution of service quality. Effective management by the Contract Management Team will be required to minimise any such impact.
The first step towards effective management is awareness of the contractual provisions that exist and the relevant time periods and deadlines. The Contract Management Manual should include a summary of the key dates relating to the one-off, or relatively infrequent, contract administration processes such as:
• annual indexation adjustments;
• Refinancing;
• benchmarking;
• market testing; and
• survey of asset - typically carried out 18 months prior to expiry.
Please refer to Appendix E (Key Dates and Time Limits).
Authorities will be aware that the distribution of functions between public organisations may change over time. The WIDP Contract (Clause 1.9) recognises this and introduces some flexibility to accommodate such changes by making it clear that references to public organisations (other than the Authority) will include any later organisations that take on their functions and/or responsibilities. Clause 81.1 of the WIDP Contract sets out the circumstances in which a local authority may transfer its rights and obligations to another public body. This is further explained at section 6.3.10 of this Guidance.
This chapter five looks at the provisions relating to both Authority Change (see Section 5.2) and Contractor Change (see Section 5.3). It goes on to cover three other types of event that could also lead to adjustments to the Unitary Charge i.e. Compensation Events (see Section 5.4) and Changes in Law (see Section 5.5) and benchmarking and market testing (Section 5.6). The impact of changes in the market for insurance is covered in Section 5.7 and refinancing is addressed in Section 5.8. Staff and pension related issues are dealt with in Section 5.9 and a number of the technical provisions including those relating to operating manuals, maintenance and equipment are coved in Section 5.10.