Contract management and Procurement management - Essay Example

It is therefore, very important that the project managers must manager certain components of the whole project management and project life cycle in more details as compared to other components of the project. It is therefore of great importance that the project managers must find a perfect fit between the different components of the overall project. Contract Management and Procurement management are two most important concepts of project management where project managers tend to interact with external players such as vendors, suppliers as well as regulatory authorities.

The management of contract and procurement processes therefore needs special skills to fit them properly into the overall process of project management as well as project life cycles. By law, a contract is "an agreement between competent parties, for consideration, to accomplish some lawful purpose with the terms clearly set forth" (Newell, 2005). The above definition of contract suggests that it is an agreement which is backed up by the legal consideration. Within the context of project management, contract management is a phased process which involves different stages.

Project Managers first determine the requirements of the contract i.e. what is required to be obtained and acquired to complete the project. Once the requirements of the project are clearly identified, the project managers issue requisitions and than the next phase are of solicitation. When solicitation phase is over, the contract is awarded to the approved vendors. This whole process requires interaction between the external as well as internal parties to the project therefore there remain very strong chances of the project overruns If the process of contract management is not effectively managed.

As the whole purpose of Project life cycle is to focus on how to manage the project therefore, contract management being one of the critical components of the project, requires that the project managers must find a perfect fit between the project management and contract management. As discussed above that the contract management starts at the time when project managers first assess the requirements of the project. In our case, we will be requiring software and hardware to implement our proposed email system, therefore once the requirements of the whole project are determined, the next phase in contract management and the project management requires that the project managers must start the process of solicitation and finally awarding the contract.

This whole process is therefore the core process of the project management since it is through the contract management that the project managers tend to manage their schedules, costs as well as other associated activities of the project. It is also important to consider that the contract management, when properly fit into the project management life cycle, delivers very important benefits for the project itself. A good contract management would provide a system for centralized oversight of the whole project however with a degree of decentralized ownership of the different components of the project.

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