Understanding your contract management responsibilities
Understand what agencies must do to meet their obligations under the Government Procurement Rules. This includes maintaining a clear contract register and implementing right-sized contract management plans.
Rule 34: Contract management system
Agencies must use a contract management system that captures key contract details, as required under Rule 34. Organisations should have a method that lets them easily identify their contracts and access relevant details.
You can use the contract register template below if your organisation doesn’t have one already.
Rule 35: Contract Management Plan
Agencies must have a contract management plan that is right-sized, taking into account the contract’s value, complexity, risk, and duration, as required under Rule 35.
Rule 35: Contract Management Plan
Assessing the nature of the contract
You may be able to assess a contract’s value, complexity, risk, and duration using your own contract management system. Or, you may have segmented your suppliers through a categorisation or segmentation process or system.
The planning phase of the Introduction to supplier relationship management describes how to do this.
Introduction to supplier relationship management
Use a template and task register to right-size the plan
For contracts higher in value, complexity, risk, and duration, the contract management plan needs to be comprehensive. Your agency may already have a template or process for this, or you can use this one as a starting point:
For contracts lower in value, complexity, risk, and duration, you can also use a ‘lite’ version of this template.
You could also use a task register as a guide for which activities will be needed to support the implementation of your contract management plan (and your supplier relationship management in general).
For extremely low-value or routine contracts, the activities listed in Sections 1 and 2 of the Essential Task Register (‘Contract Management activities and ‘Performance Management’ activities) constitute a sufficient contract management plan for the purposes of Rule 35.
More help with contract management plans
Guidance is available on creating a contract management plan, or you can email the advisory team.