3.6 The arrangements for monitoring a long-term contract and any changes to it are crucial if a partnership is to continue to deliver the services required. These arrangements, known as a governance system, usually comprise a number of groups of both authority and contract staff who have responsibility for running the contract.
3.7 MOD chose to define the governance structure at a high level within the contract. It specifies that the performance of the contract would be discussed between MOD and Modus once a month, and a liaison procedure would be used to discuss disputes before they escalated into the formal disputes resolution procedure. The contract also allows each side to call future planning and other meetings when they so require. MOD did not consider it appropriate to specify the governance arrangements in more detail to avoid subsequent changes requiring a contract variation. By September 2000 a working level substructure had been agreed.
3.8 MOD and Modus have agreed a hierarchy of six working groups to govern the contract. Subordinate working groups were set up shortly after contract signature to consider various aspects of the project and the structure is kept under constant review. For example, they established a working group for the decant phase of the project which was disbanded after the completion of that phase. Figure 14 shows the make-up of the permanent working groups. In addition, the Director of the MBR team has a regular monthly meeting with the Managing Directors of the companies in the consortium where there are no fixed terms of reference.