The Procurement Process

Procurement management follows a logical order. First, you plan what you need to contract; then you plan how you’ll do it. Next, you send out your contract requirements to sellers. They bid for the chance to work with you. You pick the best one, and then you sign the contract with them. Once the work begins, you monitor it to make sure that the contract is being followed. When the work is done, you close out the contract and fill out all the paperwork.

You need to start with a plan for the whole project. Before doing anything else, you need to think about all of the work that you will contract out for your project. You will want to plan for any purchases and acquisitions. Here’s where you take a close look at your needs to be sure that contracting is necessary. You figure out what kinds of contracts make sense for your project, and you try to define all of the parts of the project that will be contracted out.

Contract planning is where you plan out each individual contract for the project work. You work out how you’ll manage the contract, what metrics it will need to meet to be considered successful, how you’ll pick a seller, and how you’ll administer the contract once the work is happening.

The procurement management plan details how the procurement process will be managed. It includes the following information:

• The types of contracts you plan to use and any metrics that will be used to measure the contractors’ performance
• The planned delivery dates for the work or products you are contracting
• The company’s standard documents you will use
• The number of vendors or contractors involved and how they will be managed
• How purchasing may impact the constraints and assumptions of the project plan
• The coordination of purchasing lead times with the development of the project schedule
• The identification of prequalified sellers (if known)

The procurement management plan, like all other management plans, becomes a subsidiary of the project management plan. Some tools and techniques you may use during the procurement planning stage include make-or-buy analysis and definition of the contract type.

The Procurement Process

The procurement process includes five major steps, as follows:

• This step involves the purchasing department in communicating with the project manager to develop and approve a list of procurement items necessary for project implementation. The department must specify the approved items to external vendors.
• This step of the project procurement process requires the department to find potential suppliers which can procure the necessary items, according to the specifications. For this purpose the department needs to set vendor selection criteria, which may include such measures as Delivery, Service Quality, Cost, and Part Performance.
• The department must communicate with the suppliers on delivery dates and payment conditions in order to ensure “on-time” delivery of the ordered items within the stated project budget. All the conditions should be listed in a procurement contract. Also a detailed delivery schedule should be negotiated with the procurers and approved by the purchasing department.
• Success of the procurement management process depends on how the purchasing department controls the delivery and payment processes. Through arranging regular meetings with the vendors, tracking delivery progress, reviewing the ordered items against the approved product specifications, and making necessary changes to the procurement contract, the department can control the process and ensure successful accomplishment.
• The final step of the project procurement management process refers to using a system of performance indicators and measures for assessing the effectiveness and success of the entire process. The project manager needs to set up such a system and the purchasing department needs to use it in measuring the process. Special meetings and workshops can be conducted to view KPIs, intermediate results of staged delivery, performance of procurers, adherence to product specifications, communications with suppliers, and the like. In case any deviations or gaps are revealed the department should notify the project manager and make necessary changes to the procurement plan.