After you win: contract management, guarantees and getting paid

Bidding guides usually stop at the award letter. That is where the money is actually made or lost. A contract that was priced well can still end up unprofitable if mobilisation is slow, variations go unrecorded, or milestone certification stalls.

The first thirty days

1. Performance guarantee. Usually due within a set window of the award letter, commonly a percentage of contract value, valid through the defect liability period. Miss the deadline and the award can be withdrawn and your bid security forfeited.
2. Contract signature. Read the executed version against the tender documents. If anything has changed from what you bid, raise it before signing, not after.
3. Insurances. Works, third-party liability, professional indemnity, workmen's compensation — whatever the conditions require, in the amounts required, naming the parties required.
4. Mobilisation. Site access, key personnel actually deployed as named in the bid, programme submitted and accepted.

Substituting key personnel who were scored in your technical evaluation is a sensitive area in most regimes and normally needs the buyer's written consent, with a replacement of equal or better qualification.

Variations: write it down the same day

Almost every dispute over money begins as an instruction nobody recorded. If the buyer's representative asks for something outside the scope, confirm it in writing the same day: what was asked, by whom, the cost and time implication, and a request for written instruction. Contracts nearly always specify a notice period for claiming additional cost, and missing it can extinguish an otherwise valid claim.

Getting certified and getting paid

• Know the certification chain. Who measures, who certifies, who approves, who releases payment — and the contractual time limit at each step.
• Invoice exactly as the contract requires. Wrong reference, missing measurement sheet or unsigned certificate restarts the clock.
• Track retention. A percentage of each payment is typically retained and released in stages. Retention that nobody chases is retention you do not collect.
• Watch guarantee expiry dates. Guarantees usually need extending if the programme slips. An expired guarantee is a default.

Keep a contemporaneous record

Site diaries, dated photographs, weather records, minutes of every progress meeting, and a register of every instruction. If a claim or dispute arises eighteen months later, the party with contemporaneous records is in a materially stronger position — and this is equally true in adjudication, arbitration and ordinary negotiation.

Closing out

Completion is not the end. Expect a defect liability period during which you remain responsible for making good, with part of the retention held against it. Diarise the release date and the guarantee expiry, submit the as-built and operation manuals the contract requires, and get the completion certificate issued. A contract that is never formally closed out leaves money on the table.

Performance follows you

Buyers increasingly consider past performance in future evaluations, and poor delivery can affect eligibility. The contract you deliver well is also the past experience that qualifies you for the next one — which is why the reference certificate is worth chasing while people still remember your work.