Project procurement and contract management Essay

Project procurement and contract management - Essay Example In managing contracts related to procurement of materials in projects the purchasing manager or the specialist has to perform a series of tasks according to some predefined criteria. In the same way the purchasing specialist has to take it to consideration the number of factors that directly and indirectly impact on his performance In the first instant skills of the purchasing specialist would be enhanced by the vertically integrated organizational and management structure which essentially support the design planning and implementation of supply chain strategies, especially those directly related to the purchase of raw material and components for primary operations.The purchasing specialist has to focus on his tasks associated with procurement and management in order to achieve a degree of functional conformance to established standards such as the core business activity related efficiencies. This means that the ever increasing practice of modern business organizations' preference f or outsourcing certain tasks that lie out of the core business functions of the organization is dictated by competitive pressures. For instance the purchasing specialist would be able to hone his skills depending on the level of concentration on core business operations by the company.Business organizations’ increasing level of dependency on resources procured from outside enables purchasing specialists to develop a special set of skills for effective practice as a purchasing specialist. ... Customer relations and strategic focus on facilitating the control over internal and external relations are much more important than the activity of selling. As such the purchasing specialist's functional skills are augmented by both complexity and diversity of the facilitator's role rather than putting the purchasing manager or specialist into and old fashioned functionary's mould. The purchasing specialists would have to place emphasis on the supplier's credentials rather than the price itself. In the first instance a competitive tendering process involves not only specification and evaluation criteria but also the painful task of selecting the best team for the tasking hand (Morris & Morris, 2007). This requires not only a knowledge of tendering skills but also particularly strong evaluation techniques. This is due to the fact that value parameters attached to the determination process of suitability criteria are fundamentally based on the purchasing specialist's dynamic role. The entire process of procurement of supplies has to be specified in conformance with the cost involved in the prolonged lifecycle of the product. The purchasing specialist has to plan for the appropriate evaluation criteria, that would otherwise be ignored and delivery schedules dragged without much consideration of the critical path (CPA). This might affect both the functional paramet ers and the technical specifications, thus hindering the aesthetic and qualitative outcomes of the process. Finally the purchasing specialist needs to focus attention on the objective of controlling the entire supply chain evaluation process in a manner that non price factors receive a fair share of attention throughout the tender process, thus leaving little room for any