FAQ

Project management is the set of methods that mark out the life cycle of the project to contribute to a better organization and a better progress of the project.

Project management is materialized throughout the project by the use of best practices, tools, deliverables or specific roles and thus gives a methodological framework to the project. The implementation of these procedures during the realization of the project must allow it to be carried out in the respect of the cost and time factors.

What is the Enterprise Project Decomposition (EPS) structure?

It is the hierarchical decomposition of the project into tasks, subtasks and activities to facilitate the realization and the follow-up of the project in smaller work packages. It allows to set specific objectives at each level of decomposition to be executed and to produce the desired deliverables. The breakdown of the project is well done when the final stage includes only elements that have reached a sufficient level of detail to be estimated, managed and monitored.

The baseline schedule is the initial project schedule. It is the last version of the schedule containing all the information planned and validated by the client at the start of the project. It will be used as a reference to monitor the project at the current date with the actual values.

The project planning leads to the establishment of a baseline schedule that will allow to compare throughout the project the differences recorded in terms of costs and deadlines between the actual progress and the baseline schedule. The monitoring of the project progress corresponds to the analysis of various indicators such as the real durations, the costs, the allocation of the resources, the analysis of the risks… to draw conclusions on the work carried out and to set up corrective actions in the necessary cases.

Each task in the project has a time margin which is considered as free or total margin. The free float refers to the time available until the start of the successor task without affecting its start. We speak of total margin to refer to the time available without impacting the date of a milestone in progress or the end date of the project.

The role of the project manager is to evaluate the resource requirements of the project based on the estimated workload. He will then have to check the availability of the resource to allocate it to the appropriate tasks. The resource then becomes a capacity.

In order not to be dependent on a resource and to preserve their interchangeability on the project, a resource is assigned a skill that is allocated to the tasks in the schedule.

The purpose of contract management is to protect the interests of a stakeholder in terms of cost and time.

It can be summarized as the process of managing the drafting of the contract and its execution to protect the client’s interests in order to maximize performance and limit risk.

Contract administration complements contract management and is designed to ensure the implementation of contractual strategies through mail management or electronic document management, monitoring progress in terms of planning and invoicing, as well as the management and validation of additional work. It also allows to follow the relationship with the suppliers and thus to intervene at the right time to prevent and constitute a pre-litigation of defense.

Le pré-contentieux est une phase très importante pour la protection des clients et la constitution de dossiers par sujets dans le but de préserver le projet.

Electronic Document Management is a computerized methodology for organizing and managing information and electronic documents within an organization. It consists of a system of document acquisition, classification, storage, indexing and consultation. The EDM is a contract administration solution to manage contractual documents and all documents related to the project.

A Request For Information is a document in which an organization will request information about a product or service offered by another provider or service company.

Extra work is work that is not originally defined in the contract and within the performance limits. Therefore, it does not appear in the price list. Additional work therefore requires a contractual amendment and is defined by a price, a time limit and conditions for completion.

A contract amendment is a deletion, modification or addition of an element of a contract and has an impact on the cost, time and scope factors of the project expressed in the contract.

When a change is received from the customer, it must be recorded in a change or deliverable tracking tool. It is given an identifier, the date of receipt and the people in charge of the modification if they are known. The tool must list all the modifications received. The classification is done according to the criteria that are assigned, in particular codes or keywords. Each modification is processed and followed according to a procedure defined upstream of the project so that none is left aside during the project. The list of changes is regularly updated with new information about their processing.

The FIDIC International Federation of Consulting Engineers offers a range of model contracts for a variety of international construction projects in which the contractor in charge is not confined to the role of mere performer but also sees to the development.

In addition to providing general clauses on the major terms and conditions that typically govern a given construction project, the FIDIC contracts offer templates for warranties, tenders, award regulations and dispute resolution.

These model contracts are clearer and better constructed than most ad hoc contracts that are imposed by some clients. And the rights and obligations are generally relatively well divided between the client and the contractor.

A rider to the contract is an actor complementary to the initial act signed by the parties, the rider aims to complete or modify the clauses of the initial contract. The rider specifies the points on which the initial agreement is modified (price, duration, definition of services, etc.). The elements of the initial agreement that are not explicitly referred to or implicitly modified by the amendment remain unchanged.

It is particularly important to ensure that the provisions of the two documents are consistent in order to avoid problems of interpretation that would require the intervention of a judge in the event of difficulty. In most cases, contracts stipulate that amendments will only be effective if they are in writing and signed by the parties.

When the accounting officer has suspended payment of an expenditure on his own initiative, the authorising officer may request the accounting officer in writing and under his responsibility to pay, this is known as a requisition for payment. The suspension of payment must be justified and must be notified to the authorising officer in writing. The requisition order is not permanent and must be renewed for each disputed e

A “budgeted” expense is one that has been planned for an activity and is within the project’s projected budget. A “committed” expense is one that has been approved and can be incurred to meet the project need.

Today, in French and international companies that manage large projects, there is a significant disconnect between the operational managers of projects and the legal experts who are in charge of contractual relations. Companies are often not organized enough to handle the complexity of the contractual documents involved in projects, and the operational managers who have these responsibilities do not have the means to ensure sufficient contractual quality. The implementation of a contract management strategy thus makes it possible to provide procedures and tools to project stakeholders to guide them in fulfilling their contractual commitments.

The procedures and tools put in place to better understand and monitor a contractual commitment will allow project managers to more accurately control contractual relationships. It is a question of ensuring compliance with the limits of services, the commitments of responsibility of the parties involved and to evaluate the impacts on costs and deadlines of bad procedures. This also involves improving the processes for receiving and processing correspondence and changes, as well as invoicing procedures validated with the client.

The planning and the management of the deadlines on a project make it possible to control the interfaces and the tasks of the stakeholders. Monitoring the completion of work packages and anticipating delays and risks to services are a real advantage for optimizing the management of project contractual documents. Developing a collaborative work between project teams and contract managers favors the exchange of information both in terms of deviations on the project in terms of costs and deadlines as well as on the communication of modifying works.

Les cahiers des charges traduisent l’engagement pris entre le maître d’ouvrage et le maître d’œuvre ou le prestataire d’une tâche. Ils représentent le travail et les responsabilités de l’entrepreneur sur le lot de travaux, ils sont les conditions de réalisation de ce lot. Les limites de prestations sont utiles pour définir les interfaces du projet et pour gérer les relations entre les lots et les intervenants. D’autre part, elles ont un pouvoir contractuel et juridique en cas de litige sur la prestation fournie.

Defining the roles of the project’s stakeholders is intended to involve all the project’s actors and to make them accountable for their contractual commitments. Indeed, each party commits to produce one or more project batches and to respect deadlines and costs for these deliverables. The project manager can thus follow the production of the deliverables and check the effective delivery dates against the contractual commitments.

Contract change management is an important part of good project contract management. Each change request must be listed, categorized and traced in a specific document. The request is sent to the design office and the project manager to make a technical estimate in terms of impact on the project costs and deadlines. Contractual deadlines for response are set for requests for modification work. The request is then validated with the stakeholders and implemented on the project.

The implementation of a mail procedure is necessary to simplify exchanges and to process mail by subject. The mail arriving from the customer is referenced to determine who must answer, who must validate the mail and for what date. A database with all the letters must be kept up to date, it allows traceability of the letters to analyze the gaps and responsibilities in the processing of the schedule. The frequency of mail review meetings is established according to needs.