Management

Building Your Future Facilities (BYFF) is a company that develops new industrial buildings and facilities, and has recently been bought by a new company, BYFF’s owner (BYFFO). BYFFO’s CEO has hired you to review how BYFF works with various contractors and consultants in order to reduce risk when developing new and complex projects. BYFFO believes that BYFF has established a best practice approach to the early contractor involvement phase, leading to better outcomes in terms of cost, quality and schedule. This access to best practice processes is one of the reasons that BYFFO acquired BYFF. The new owner is keen to see how BYFF’s early contractor involvement stage operates today. BYFFO intends to use the deploy the same best practices in its other infrastructure development projects in Australia. It plans do this by sharing a standards-based process model with the Directors of the other businesses at a level of detail that allows them and their teams to understand the key steps, and quickly integrate them into their projects. 

To this end, the owner has ensured that you have had access to key personnel in BYFF, allowing you to review existing written descriptions or models of how things happen at the company, conduct interviews, and observe the process in action. As a result, you have prepared the following process description of BYFF’s early contractor involvement process. 

The next step for you, and the only requirement for this assignment, is to model this process in BPMN using Bizagi. Please document any assumptions you have made within the model using the BPMN “text annotation” construct. 

Early Contractor Involvement Process 

As soon as the local government confirms receipt of BYFF’s Development Approval (DA) application, BYFF’s Contracts & Procurement (C&P) Manager finalises a document called Invitation To Tender (ITT) and issues it to 3 construction companies. This document asks them to provide a proposed response to the ITT, including their cost proposal, to work alongside BYFF and its other suppliers to finalise plans for the construction phase. The construction companies have 4 weeks to respond to the ITT in full. 

Since BYFF C&P wants to ensure it gets competitive bids, it requires those who intend responding in full to confirm their interest within 1 week of receiving the ITT. If a company fails to respond within 1 week, BYFF’s C&P Manager sends a reminder to that company, giving them 3 days to confirm their interest. If after 3 days, BYFF has not received a response, the C&P Manager will send the ITT to a 4th interested company, and inform all companies that the date is now 4 weeks from that new date (thus ensuring that the 4th contractor has time to prepare a good response). BYFF does not seek further confirmation from the 4th company that it will respond. All contractor responses must be received by the Tenders emails inbox BYFF by 3pm on that date. 

If a consultant requests an extension beyond the 4 weeks, BYFF’s C&P Manager will consider it, and may grant an additional 2 weeks, depending on the circumstances. If the extension is granted, the C&P Manager will inform all contractors of the revised submission date for their responses, and if not, she will inform the requesting contractor that the request has been rejected. In the great majority of cases, the contractors do not request an extension, as they are concerned it may undermine BYFF’s impression of their ability to deliver on time in the construction phase. 

At 3.01pm on the day the submissions are due, BYFF’s C&P Manager opens the Tender Inbox, and prints each submission in triplicate: one for each of the 3 members of the Contracts Assessment Panel which will meet within 3 days to jointly review and assess the responses. This Assessment Panel will start by conducting a Health, Safety & Environmental (HSE) assessment to ensure the contractors have a good record in these areas, followed by a Technical Assessment to confirm that the contractors have proposed the right technical experts, and propose a satisfactory schedule. Concurrently, the C&P Manager reviews the cost component of each company’s response, and summarises them in a standardised format which is then provided to the Contract Assessment Panel. Once costs are received, the Assessment Panel reviews those contract documents including cost, HSE and Technical assessments, and makes a decision to select the preferred contractor. The Panel then informs the C&P Manager, who then prepares sends the selected contractor a letter and includes a contract to be signed. The contractor must sign and return this contract (including any updates to it) within 5 days, during which time various terms can be negotiated as needed. If the contractor does not contact BYFF’s C&P Manager to return the signed contract or to negotiate the terms within 3 days, the C&P Manager will contact them on day 4 to remind them they must sign and return the contract by day 5. So far, this approach has always delivered a successful outcome for BYFF. 

Now that the contractor has been selected, BYFF’s PM arranges a Team Kick-off meeting between the selected Construction contractor, the external Consultant engineer, and him. The output of this meeting is a confirmed scope for the construction contractor and consultant engineers to work on, and an agreed schedule of team meetings for the remainder of the EOI process. Over the next few months, this process is consistent: on the 25th day of each month, the PM will request project updates from both external suppliers to be delivered by the 29th of each month. By the 29th of each month, the PM receives two documents by email from each of the suppliers, comprising a written report on progress and an invoice. Once he has received both, the PM reviews the reports, and if necessary, seeks clarifications from the relevant supplier prior to the workshop the following day. At the same time, he also reviews the invoices, and if satisfied, approves and emails a scan of the invoices to the C&P Manager to process it. If the invoice was different to the PM’s expectations, he contacts the supplier, seeking clarification and a new invoice (if required). Sometimes the invoice is accepted without further change as a result of that clarification. The C&P Manager will enter the invoice in the procurement module of the ERP system, which will automatically process the invoice in the ERP and instruct the bank to pay it. The PM also chairs a team workshop on the 15th and 30th of each month where the team reviews its collective progress. These workshops are designed to allow the PM to review progress, highlight challenges and identify solutions rapidly, which, over the 4 months, will provide BYFF with a reliable plan, cost and schedule for constructing its new facilities. Once the PM assesses these outputs are complete, the ECI phase is successfully completed. 

After the ECI process is complete, the PM requests that the contractors send their final invoices. These will be reviewed and, if appropriate, approved by the PM, following the invoice review and payment process outlined above. 

At any stage after arranging the ECI kick-off meeting, the local government may provide BYFF’s PM with its development approval for the project, in which case the process continues. If the local government rejects the development application, this means there is no point in continuing the ECI, so results in BYFF’s PM informing the contractors that BYFF is stopping the ECI process abruptly. The possibility has been contemplated in the contract, so the external contractors will issue a final invoice once that notice has been given, which is reviewed in the usual Accounts payable process, and the project will end. 

 

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