Contract Admin 101
Design is an instruction, just like a contract.
Contract Administration is an activity required to ensure the building described in the contract document is in fact the building that gets built. It also includes the processes to initiate change and record progress.
These documents tend to be grouped as:
Coordinating Documents: Minutes, Deficiency Lists, Memos, General Reviews, and Letters
Approval Process Documents: Instructions, Notices, Orders and Certificates
Advice + Consent Process Documents: Shop Drawing and Sample Reviews
Each of the documents must be created, entered, stored, published and retrieved throughout the contract admin stage.
What is a Contract?
A contract is an agreement between two or more parties in which one agrees to provide service and perform their respective duties, responsibilities and obligations to the other in exchange for some consideration—in most cases, money. Contracts, serving as the backbone of any professional agreement, play a pivotal role in ensuring the success of collaborations and projects.
In construction, there are five main contract types:
Lump Sum
Time x Materials
Unit Price
Guaranteed Maximum Price (GMP)
Cost-Plus
What does a Contract Administrator do?
A contract administrator plays an important role in the smooth operation of any business entity through their expertise in managing contracts. They ensure all agreements adhere to stipulated guidelines, safeguarding the company from any potential risk. A contract administrator is responsible for preparing, examining, analyzing, and revising contracts. Their primary responsibility is to oversee the contract implementation and management to ensure all parties follow the stipulated terms and intervene when necessary to enforce the terms of the contract. It’s important for contract administrators to use analytical thinking to understand the significance of the clauses included.
Who needs Contract Admin?
To the surprise of some, contract administration is required by every organization, every discipline, and every project regardless of what is being built. Our experience at Statslog shows that users include the full range of employees, from clerks, receptionists, executive assistants, site representatives, project managers, to associates and/or partners. Our users also come from a wide variety of business and organizations—architects, engineers, retail chains, school and hospital boards, mining companies, general contractors, provincial ministries and federal departments.
Case Studies
Office Retrofit
An office retrofit project with three clients, two architects (base building, interior partitions), an internal and contracted project manager and construction manager. After three months of construction, this team could not agree on the current contract value. Within one month, a project database was established by Statslog and monitored for the duration of the job. The subsequent four audits all had a positive outcome, which attests to the robustness of our database and embedded calculations.
Tunisian Mine
Our client was administering construction of a mine and its above-ground structures in Tunisia. The assignment was to create forms with the local currency (Dinars) and using Parisian French as the language of communication. Translators provided the text of the Form, the $ symbol was changed to ‘D’ relocated to the end of the currency, and a regional keyboard solved the day-to-day entry. The project was completed without further involvement, demonstrating the highly customizable features of our software.
Additional projects include: mines in Chile and Tunisia; embassies in China, Korea, USA and Canada; hospitals, condos, schools, and airports. Although collaboration is a desirable goal, in most cases, contract administration is the singular responsibility of the project architect.
