What do you do when a Project Delivery starts to veer off course? Customers are sometimes  tempted to focus on ensuring that the Consultant’s failures are proven and acknowledged; just as Consultants are tempted to demonstrate how missing or inaccurate data, along with lax customer participation (reviews and such), combined with a series of changes from the initial SOW helped cause the Project delivery problem. In almost every failed Project there are generally plenty of things each party could have done much better and much sooner to help prevent that failure. Neither party wins when they engage in a finger-pointing process; that process alienates the other party and just defers and meaningful efforts to actually resolve the problem.  If you agree with this requirement for a “win-win” Project philosophy Contract Remedies can represent an excellent vehicle to accelerate the cure process and by-passing fault assignment and litigation sink holes. However, this approach requires more work by both parties to: 1) contemplate meaning contract remedies as you construct the Project delivery plan; and 2) more work in careful monitoring of the Project delivery process so you can initiate the cure befor e the deliver gets too far off track, (for this the parties must rely upon following the Project Methodology). It’s much easier to get the other party to consider and agree upon appropriate cure measures, when they are clear-headed and still in a logical planning; if you do not bother to do this up front and raise the subject after the Project starts to falter you will get finger pointing rather than a meaningful effort to cure the problem; for example rather than argue why a Project is 2 weeks behind schedule, it might be more useful to have an additional Consultant or two assigned to help catch up…that is a contract remedy.

Have you ever been confronted with a delivery scenario where you recognize that with a little more effort, staff or resource of some sort, that a potentially larger issue could be quickly and efficiently resolved? Well that is a very common situation in the world of Consulting Service Project delivery. Planning for those scenarios and agreeing on the applicable incremental contribution (additional staff, expanded hours for the Service delivery etc.). If the Project Delivery Team from both the Customer and Consultant carefully review the SOW often we can formulate appropriate “Contract Remedies” like those mentioned above. It’s much more valuable to all concerned to help avoid or remediate a problem early and efficiently rather than try to compensate you for the failure after the Project fails.