Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
can often be covered in no more than one hour, with the briefi ng taking
place immediately prior to their fi rst evaluation exercise, if necessary.
The training session should cover not only the use of the software, but
also the principles of evaluation. In addition to this a number of staff
within the procurement team may need to attend an advanced training
course in the use of the system, to enable them to act as in-house
experts.
The milestones of procurement reporting
On a large construction programme reporting activities are usually
undertaken by a separate functional team called project controls. Project
controls essentially gather and present data on time and cost and report
on the progress of construction delivery. To enable the consistent report-
ing of procurement activity it is important to develop and agree a stand-
ard set of milestones. The milestones may include (in chronological
order):
• publication of a contract notice
• PQQ return
• issue of the PQQ evaluation report
• Tender list approval
• Tender issue
• Tender return, and
• Contract award.
An agreed standard set of procurement milestones can then be em-
bedded within a baseline schedule. The baseline schedule states the
expected timing of a series of events and is compared to the actual
outcome in a report called the tender event schedule (TES). The TES
can be produced every month to organise and update appropriate pro-
curement reporting. The tender event schedule acts as a focal point for
other reports, including Board Reports that present project-by-project
status reviews against each procurement milestone. These reporting
processes are an essential means of giving the programme team an
understanding of the key details, derived from the large amounts of
information that fl ow around any large programme. It is therefore criti-
cal that these reporting processes are set out early in the programme's
life cycle.
