The title above may look like the beginning of a big word salad so it’s worthwhile to take a closer look at what it all means and how OCCM is relevant for massive projects. How massive? How about the maintenance, repair, or overhaul of a US Navy warship? Or the remodeling of a multi-story, hospital complex, complete with hundreds of patients?
Such large projects have at least one prime contractor with various contract types for dozens of subcontractors and specialties, projects spanning months or years, with budgets in millions or billions. So far, so good. We have a project, a project plan and a critical path that will get us to the end of the project on time and on budget. All’s good here, right? Except for changes.
Every project, regardless of size or complexity has changes. Massive projects have, well, massive changes. An adjusted measurement or a new material or a mistaken specification or an unforeseen glitch or a new law or a client change-of-mind. They are legitimate and essential and take more planning and take more time and cost more money. And one last thing: they are impossible to avoid.
Every subcontractor has at least one contract for the project. When the work changes, the contract must change to specify the new work. Work often stops while engineers engineer, and planners plan, and administrators administer, and stakeholders stake, until the contract is changed and the subcontractor resumes work. Throw in lots of changes and lots of work stoppages and lots of delays and before you know it, the project’s critical path takes a hit, and the completion date slips, and the budget grows wings.
When changes happen, the paperwork almost always takes more time than the work itself. This fact is vitally important and bears repeating. It takes more time for the paperwork than for the real work. Add in a work stoppage while the subcontractor’s meter is running, and it’s plain to see why big projects always take more time and more money.
OCCM simultaneously manages multiple contract vehicles, hundreds of additions and deletions, new and revised work orders, payments and credits, new funding, added option exercises, delivery schedule extensions, stop orders, and terminations. And it gets better. OCCM is instantly available anywhere in the world to all administrators, managers, engineers, stakeholders, and project executives. With OCCM, contract changes move at the speed of light through a customizable workflow to every person in the process. The changed contract is issued in record time, work resumes, and the critical path is a little less critical.
OCCM is a module of the Open Acquisition System. It is scalable, configurable, and browser-based for instant access anytime, anywhere in the world. The software can be deployed as a standalone system or as an add-on to an existing enterprise or contract writing system. Contracting legal terms and clauses including the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) are built in. Extensive reporting capabilities provide stakeholders and auditors with unparalleled transaction transparency from budget to spending level to line-item detail.
OCCM is aspirin for the headache of contract changes. How about a demo?