CEEQUAL for Term Contracts
About Term Contracts
CEEQUAL for Term Contracts has been specifically created for the assessment of engineering and public realm work that is undertaken through contracts covering work in a geographical or operational area over many years.
 Examples
include highway, rail or sewer maintenance, regular
interventions in rivers or drainage channels to maintain
channel capacity, and a series of minor new works such
as road junction remodelling, track maintenance and
renewals or minor realignments, all undertaken through
what we call ‘term contracts’. With multiple
works orders for the individual jobs within the contract,
not only is the nature of the work often different from
projects, but its procurement and management are also
normally different.
CEEQUAL for Term Contracts has been developed to extend
the scope of CEEQUAL in allowing term contract works
to be assessed and gain Awards against essentially the
same criteria as new civil engineering or refurbishment
projects. The main structure and approach is the same
as in the CEEQUAL Assessment Manual for Projects but
each question is characterised as being relevant to
either ‘Contract Management’ or ‘Delivery
on the Ground’.
CEEQUAL for Term Contracts has two question sets, one
for maintenance works and one for new works, with two
matching Manuals, and two matching spreadsheets for
capturing the scores and evidence. For contracts whose
scope includes both maintenance and new works, these
will be assessed separately and the scores aggregated
after completion of each assessment, as explained in
the Assessment Manual. We are intending to incorporate
CEEQUAL for Term Contracts into the Online Assessment
Tool as part of the upgrade of the CEEQUAL Methodology
to Version 5 later in 2011.
Why a separate form of CEEQUAL for Term Contracts?
Environmental management of work undertaken through
term contracts, which is often distributed over a wide
geographical area and with each item of work often comparatively
small, presents special challenges. With up to 2000
works orders per month, project-scale environmental
management procedures do not work, and need to be amended.
Similarly, CEEQUAL’s methodology has been adapted
for this way of undertaking the contracted work.
At one end of the scale, the works covered by such
contracts may simply be straightforward road maintenance
whereas, at the other end, significant new construction
may be involved. For this reason, as well as two Manuals,
there is the provision for an increased level of scoping-out
of questions to match the scale and nature of the works
being assessed. Refer to the Manual section: ‘How
contracts are to be assessed?’
Term contracts offer a convenient means of carrying
out large numbers of discrete jobs of relatively low
individual value. Through this mechanism procurement
costs per job are minimised by work simply being initiated
by a written order or instruction. The success of such
a contract is normally a reflection of the strength
of the contractor’s understanding of the client’s
requirements, the teamwork generated amongst the parties,
and the successful delivery of these requirements. So
it is recognised that any assessment of term contracts
should be a team effort between all parties involved
in the contract: client, designer (if included), contractor
and contract manager or engineer. This approach should
maximise the opportunity for any CEEQUAL assessment
to be ultimately successful. It is also why each question
has a single scoring column compared to the three separate
ones for Client, Design & Construct in CEEQUAL for
UK Projects and CEEQUAL International.
Assessors who wish to use CEEQUAL for Term Contracts
will need training either through a 2-day Term Contracts
Assessor Training Course or, if already trained on the
Projects Version, through a one-day extension course.
Development of CEEQUAL Term Contracts
The challenge of developing a mechanism for assessing
term contracts has taken some time. In 2009, a diverse
project steering group, including a number of Assessors
and Verifiers, was assembled in order to gain perspectives
from different contract arrangements and perspectives.
Alternative mechanisms were piloted in 2010, and the
feedback from those pilots enabled the finalisation
of CEEQUAL for Term Contracts. The first awards presented
at the Launch event on 14 March 2011 stemmed from these
2010 pilots, as does the Award being presented today.
For more information
For more information about CEEQUAL Term Contracts please contact the Scheme Management Team on 020 3137 2379 or e-mail support@ceequal.com.
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