The contract administration manual should address the project's stakeholder and communications arrangements. A useful starting point is to review the stakeholder management plan, which is developed to identify and manage different stakeholder groups interested in the services provided by or through a Partnership Victoria project. The stakeholder management plan will identify a list of interested stakeholders and any existing and/or proposed communication arrangements.
Stakeholder communications arrangements are generally established during the procurement phase. As such, the contract management team will need to review the existing stakeholder management plan, in order to understand:
• who the stakeholder groups are;
• why they are interested in a project; and
• what communication arrangements have been established.
These arrangements may need to be modified to ensure they are appropriate during the construction and/or service delivery phases.
For example, for a water sector project, water users will be interested in water quality levels. In relationship to a PPP prison, other network service providers are likely to be interested in the prison's service outcomes. In some cases, there may be a need for regular or irregular public communications.