Pre-award And Post-award Issues In Contract Management And Procurement

Contract Management and Procurement

Discuss about the Pre-award and Post-award Issues in Contract Management and Procurement.

The Contract management and the procurement have the best strategy and the practices applied for the monitoring and documenting the performance. The guidelines over the strategies and to the issues majorly cover the long term services on the contract basis. It usually covers all the areas for the delivering the services, managing the relationships, contracting administration services, improvements made in seeking the performances and managing the changes. While the main focus on the guidelines based on the contracts and to the commercial providers is to the follow the major principles based on the guidance which is equally applicable to the arrangements with the in-house providers and to public sectors. Effective procurement is the best way of practicing and becoming an important factor in the Health department. It is the process that mainly ensures both the parties for to fulfil the desires meet to their respective obligations effectively and efficiently.

Contract Management can be defined as the continuous reviews and the management of the contractual terms or the services which is been specified to all the service level agreements which is been secured through the procurement process for ensuring about the outcomes agreed are be delivered by the suppliers and partners. Health contract management and governance have the limited resources and largely ineffective when the issues were unaddressed.

It can be defined as the process of the acquiring the goods and services. It helps in processing the whole cycle of the organisation from identification of the needs from the end process of the services for the end of the useful life of the asset and its disposal. It has the main concerned for securing the goods and services that fulfils the best needs of the users and towards the local community in order to achieve the main object and fulfilling all the priorities (Shaw et al., 2013).

Health development and their management staff work according to the given program offices to develop the program offices according to the development of the opportunities. It is the key communication between the applicants and the health security staff during the pre-awarded process. The information is been collected on the basis of submission of the task which is generally been collected regarding to the applications for the prior knowledge to award for the level of efforts etc. Generally, the organisation have the equal ratio of getting the risks and it is basic to prevent from the risks, if it gets fail to identify the risks and to overcome from it, the potential benefits are lost. The procurement has led for identifying and initializing for addressing many issues and being raised in the contract (Petsoulas et al., 2014). Health is taking an initiative for initialising and performing all the essential activities to ensure the superior oversight over the agreements.

Procurement

The various issues were raised due to unclear policies and procedures made when the process was initiated. Difficulty was cause due to the issues and the Procurement delegations regarding to the Contract depending on its nature and value. The main issue was been raised on and mainly affected due to:

• Governance and accountability for the management of the contract was poor due to Lack of Documentation

• The arrangements made regarding to the fundamental contract management were not properly established.
• Mis-management and inefficient monitoring of the contract management plan
• Guidelines provided regarding the implementation of the contract were not applied properly during the implementation phase
• Performance was based on the Data centre availability, management of the incidence, accuracy and timely updating the configuration of the management database, accuracy in the billing (Sampson et al., 2012).

The main concept of the contract management and the procurement was been designed on the basis of delivering the various services and the activities. The organisation was involved with the large contracts made between the government and to the private sector that must have the continue process of doing the work well. Because of this organisation is ready and willing to provide the facilities and the services to the government. The possible benefits of the arrangements made are undeniable (Wye et al., 2015). However these services were not presented during the delivery time.

1. The arrangements was made at the initial level before implementing the services was not properly initiated due to the lack of the skills which were unable to identify the necessities of the health department for having the proper usability of the computing services. There were less number of specialists and they too failed to identify and to implement the main objectives and the goal with the proper strategies and designed solution.
2. There was no appropriate management for monitoring the contract performance and to cover the entire data centre for operating and monitoring to the sole data centre for ensuring about the disaster recovery and to the services which mainly lack in the essential capacity of the health care department. For this the earlier action was not recognised because of the undedicated management. The specialist was not in the practice when the contract was commenced (Checkland et al., 2013).
3. The guidelines which was specified and mentioned was not followed properly during the delivery time of the services been made because the plan which was designed by the management expertise were unable to access the potential risks and mitigating the effects been made and to identify the potential risks on the basis of the recording and monitoring of the contract to the purchased IT equipment’s.
4. Performance based on the inadequacy of the contract failed to the delivery of the services and to the periodic performance were mainly have the different aspects of covering the different aspects of the contract. The provision of the database was not appropriate as they were not updating the database and to store the current data into the database was failed due to the configuration was not made on time and it was not accurately accessed by the managers.
5. The analysis was made on the inaccuracy of the billing as it was not made on the time been specified in the contract (Taylor-Phillips et al., 2014).

Post award is been referred when the awards been received and the research is done on the basis of the issues been raise. It is been raised due to the bad impacts of the poor planning. The contractors ensured that they will assist the best quality of services to the organisation that complies with the terms and conditions but they intently failed to deliver because of lack of management and resources which had a bigger impact on the loss of huge costs and to the organisation budgets.

The Services provided by the contractors were inadequate and incapable of addressing the demands of the health care system.

• Lack of Inter-changeability between the system
• Contractors was unable to update the description of the solution by 6 months
• Knowledge Management was not according to the contract terms.
• Tracking of the assets and management was not properly managed.

1. System design was not dedicated to perform the operations and the ability of the data centre were unable for the best practices between the data centres
2. Development of the Specifications was essential to have the clear specifications so as to overcome from the risks of the contract disputes, cost blow outs and from the poor outcomes (Wye et al., 2015).
3. Due to the poor documentation meant that contractors were unable to determine the extent of the various level of delivering the services regarding to the various executives level of health.
4. Knowledge management is an integral part of the business management, it is essential that a provision is made for the knowledge management within the system; Moreover the system was not having the appropriate provision. It was not been dealt according to the specified terms and conditions during the contract time.
5. Tracking of the organisation asset was not functionalised and even the tracking cost was not appropriate to monitor the contract expenditure on time. The analysis was also made on the tracking cost against the budget because the variations were made continuously to the cost (Gridley et al., 2012).

Conclusion

The organisation should be aware of the large contracts made between the government and to the private sector that must have the continue process of doing the work well. Government are unable to deliver the skills and capabilities to deliver the services. Because of this organisation is ready and willing to provide the facilities and the services to the government. The possible benefits of the arrangements made are undeniable. Generally they have the equal ratio of getting the risks and it is necessary to prevent from the risks, if it gets fail to identify the risks and to overcome from it, the potential benefits are lost. Health IT branch is managing all the operational activities so as the same things should not appear in the near future.

References

Checkland, K., Coleman, A., McDermott, I., Segar, J., Miller, R., Petsoulas, C., Wallace, A., Harrison, S. and Peckham, S., 2013. Primary care-led commissioning: applying lessons from the past to the early development of clinical commissioning groups in England. Br J Gen Pract, 63(614), pp.e611-e619.

Gridley, K., Spiers, G., Aspinal, F., Bernard, S., Atkin, K. and Parker, G., 2012. Can general practitioner commissioning deliver equity and excellence? Evidence from two studies of service improvement in the English NHS. Journal of health services research & policy, 17(2), pp.87-93.

Petsoulas, C., Allen, P., Checkland, K., Coleman, A., Segar, J., Peckham, S. and Mcdermott, I., 2014. Views of NHS commissioners on commissioning support provision. Evidence from a qualitative study examining the early development of clinical commissioning groups in England. BMJ open, 4(10), p.e005970.

Petsoulas, C., Allen, P., Checkland, K., Coleman, A., Segar, J., Peckham, S. and Mcdermott, I., 2014. Views of NHS commissioners on commissioning support provision. Evidence from a qualitative study examining the early development of clinical commissioning groups in England. BMJ open, 4(10), p.e005970.

Sampson, F., O’cathain, A., Strong, M., Pickin, M. and Esmonde, L., 2012. Commissioning processes in primary care trusts: a repeated cross-sectional survey of health care commissioners in England. Journal of Health Services Research & Policy, 17(1_suppl), pp.31-39.

Shaw, S.E., Smith, J.A., Porter, A., Rosen, R. and Mays, N., 2013. The work of commissioning: a multisite case study of healthcare commissioning in England9s NHS. BMJ open, 3(9), p.e003341.

Smith, J. and Woodin, J., 2011. Purchasing healthcare. Healthcare management, 2.

Taylor-Phillips, S., Clarke, A., Grove, A., Swan, J., Parsons, H., Gkeredakis, E., Mills, P., Powell, J., Nicolini, D., Roginski, C. and Scarbrough, H., 2014. Coproduction in commissioning decisions: is there an association with decision satisfaction for commissioners working in the NHS? A cross-sectional survey 2010/2011. BMJ open, 4(6), p.e004810.

Wye, L., Brangan, E., Cameron, A., Gabbay, J., Klein, J.H. and Pope, C., 2015. Knowledge exchange in health-care commissioning: case studies of the use of commercial, not-for-profit and public sector agencies, 2011–14.

Wye, L., Brangan, E., Cameron, A., Gabbay, J., Klein, J.H., Anthwal, R. and Pope, C., 2015. What do external consultants from private and not-for-profit companies offer healthcare commissioners? A qualitative study of knowledge exchange. BMJ open, 5(2), p.e006558.