The role of the contract administration manual in enabling the government party to meet its obligations is explained in chapter 6 of the Partnerships Victoria Contract management guide. To ensure the manual fulfils this role, the contract director should:
• review the contract and identify -
- the obligations on the government party;
- the timeframes in which these obligations must be undertaken;
- whether the obligation must be undertaken once only, is recurrent, or only arises if a specific incident occurs;
• identify who is able to deliver the obligations of the government party under the contract and who is contractually required to deliver the obligations;
• identify the role that other government agencies or entities may have in influencing the ability of the responsible person or organisation to deliver the government party's contractual obligations;
• identify any other government party projects, activities or responsibilities (including statutory functions) which may impinge on the ability of either the government party or the private party to meet its obligations under the contract;
• identify any processes which must be undertaken as a pre-condition to fulfilling the obligations of the government party or the private party (for example, the obligations of the private party may only arise after planning approval for a project has been procured by the private party, on the basis of the physical project as specified by the private party and agreed with the government party);
• consider the extent to which the government party can expedite or otherwise facilitate these processes; and
• consider the resources necessary to undertake these obligations.
Once the contract director has gathered information relating to the obligations of the government party under the contract, they should include in the contract administration manual actions required to ensure that the government party's obligations are met. The nature of these actions will be different for different categories of obligations:
• for obligations that must be performed in the short to medium term, or that must be performed on a regular basis, the contract administration manual should document how and when the obligation will be performed. For example, in the specific case where the government party is obliged to provide raw water within specific quality parameters for a water treatment project, this could be incorporated as follows:
Obligation/Issue/ Risk | Who? | What? | When? | How? |
Government to provide raw water for the project | Confirm that all input water required for the project is tested and arrangements have been put in place to ensure that it meets quality parameters | By [date/time] | Liaise with [ ]; etc. |
• for obligations that must be performed at some known or predictable time beyond the short to medium term, the contract administration manual should document when planning to perform the obligations should commence. The regular reviews of the contract administration manual (see section 16 below) should then identify when this obligation has moved into the medium term, and more detailed planning should then begin. For example, if the contract allows the government party to reprice reviewable services at five-year intervals, the initial contract administration manual should identify that planning for the reviewable services process should commence early in the fourth year.
• obligations that only need be performed if some unpredictable future event occurs should be dealt with through the contingency arrangements (see section 8.3 above).
Risks that arise from the government party not fulfilling its contractual and implied obligations should be analysed as described in section 8 of this methodology.
Government's possible implied obligations are discussed in chapter 2 of the Partnerships Victoria Contract management guide. The contract administration manual should include actions required to ensure that the government party's implied obligations, as well as its express contractual obligations, are met.