Factors to be considered in establishing structures to manage the relationship include:
• senior management support - the relationship should be championed at senior levels in both organisations. Senior management attitudes and actions will signal to other personnel how they should treat the relationship;
• peer-to-peer communication - working relationships between the parties should be conducted between peers. Typically, a government party contract manager should communicate with their contract manager counterpart in the private party;
• separation of roles - while introducing multiple formal management levels may be unnecessary, day-to-day contract management and service delivery should be separate from management of the overall strategic relationship and long-term strategic issues. In major projects, it is desirable to separate the detailed contract management functions carried out by the contract management team, from the strategic relationship management functions by having a senior executive officer (the contract director) responsible for strategic relationship management. This will prevent day-to-day issues swamping the contract director. In some projects, it is also appropriate for the senior responsible owner to also have regular contact with equivalently senior private partner or consortium representatives;
• appropriate and clear roles and responsibilities - roles and responsibilities of contract team members (and also for private party representatives) should be clear and personnel involved in managing the relationship need an appropriate level of authority to carry out their jobs effectively; and
• escalation paths - issue and decision escalation paths should be established, understood and used appropriately so that problems are resolved early. If a timely decision or resolution cannot be made at one level, it should be referred promptly to a more senior level. The project deed should set out in some detail the joint management forums as well as escalation paths to resolve issues that arise.