The governance approach adopted by the Procuring Authority should allow its contract management team to reach effective resolutions on day-to-day issues and make timely decisions on strategic matters.
The core expertise required by the team encompasses contract management, project management, risk management and general commercial negotiation expertise. Additional specialised skills that are required include legal, communications, financial, insurance, technical and administrative expertise. A thorough list of competencies required in a contract management team with respect to continuous training is detailed in Section 2.2 (Contract management team training).
The team should be headed by a contract manager, project manager or project director, whose role is to act as the Procuring Authority's primary representative when dealing with the Project Company. Depending on the nature of the project and resources available to the contract manager (such as external consultants and other government teams), other dedicated performance managers, contract administrators, legal managers, financial managers, communication managers, insurance managers and other technical specialists may also be needed. The team at the contract management level should meet regularly to discuss day-to-day operational management issues.
As this chapter is focused on the contract management team that sits within a Procuring Authority, it does not focus on other governance arrangements, such as the existence of steering or other strategic committees with broader government officials, nor does it focus on any governance arrangement with the Project Company, such as nomination of Project Company board members. Those topics are detailed in Section 3.3 (Stakeholder management).