Contract Management and Enforcement

Once the contractor starts work, you want to monitor progress, using your contract documents as your basis for comparison.

With a good bid package like you put together in the planning phase, managing your project should run fairly smoothly. Still misunderstandings can occur during construction and contractor attitudes often change. That’s when you’ll have to enforce the contract.

Contract enforcement letters have a serious tone. They are short, direct, and require a specific response within a limited time. Use enforcement letters when a contractor stops reasonably responding to other means of communication such as meeting minutes, discussions, RFI’s, change orders, or emails/letters.

Proper documentation is one of the most important aspects of successfully enforcing the contract. Get in the habit early of writing things down and addressing meeting notes to the contractor.

Reference the contract documents when addressing contract deviations or violations, and request a timely response. Even when no response is given, that too is, a response. To prevent contractors from being non-responsive give a response deadline and the decision and if necessary, what default action will be taken in the event of a non-response.

Be careful not to be too threatening, you don’t want to ruffle feathers too much, in the beginning.

If by the end of the deadline they have not complied, issue them a letter stating you are exercising your options. Review the section on Construction – Denying Payments for more information on this process.