“Start your projects on the right track with proper pre-planning.”

Today we discuss proper project pre-planning related to contract risks.

Getting projects organized upfront is a key part of building successful projects. The entire pre-planning process is a broad subject so today we are going to look at a part of the process.  We are talking about the contract risks.

All contracts have a set of deliverables and there are risks associated with any deliverable. This can be liquidated damages, notifications, change requests, work requirements, and many other things. Each one presents a risk that we fail to deliver or incur some costs because of our failure to properly manage these risks. To help avoid these pitfalls we want to make sure we develop proper plans to address them.

If we take the time in the beginning to properly identify and plan for these risks we will have a proper system to deal with them and manage them during the project. These plans allow us to assign proper responsibility and track these items.

[tweetthis]Start your projects on the right track with proper pre-planning[/tweetthis]

To start this planning process you need to carefully review your contract. Identify all deliverables in the contract from insurance to invoices. Develop a list of all potential deliverables along with the parameters associated with them like delivery methods, time constraints and details required. In addition to listing these, we want to assign a responsible person for each deliverable. Some items may have a chain of responsibility. For instance, daily reports may start with someone in the filed staff then transfer to your PM team so there will be multiple people responsible for some items. When there is clearly identify who does what and when.

Now that you have a good understanding of your contract risks and who will be responsible for them you need to add some of the key items to your project reporting process. Depending on the project and the risks, this may be one or many items that get added to your Project Dashboard. This way we can properly track our activities and make sure we are meeting all of our requirements.

Setting the project on the right track in the beginning takes a little effort but the results are successful projects that maintain or exceed profit margins. It’s well worth the effort.

Take-Action Items:

1. Review all contracts for deliverables

2. Create a deliverable / responsibility matrix

3. Add key risks to project reporting and your Project Dashboard