On Monday 9th September, the Procurement Group met to hear from Len Bunton, about Conflict Avoidance, and Trevor Hursthouse, about Fair Payment Practices.
The group also discussed plans for future Procurement group sessions, which will be released on our website shortly. If you have any ideas about what topics the group should cover, get in touch and let us know.
Conflict Avoidance
The Conflict Avoidance Coalition Steering Group works to provide guidance on conflict avoidance and early intervention strategies and to support contracting parties to implement conflict avoidance techniques to deal with disputes more effectively.
Early intervention is key to the conflict avoidance process as it enables all parties to have their views heard and solve their disputes before they can become bigger issues. It’s crucial that all parties are included in resolution discussions, and that organisations understand that adjudication and mediation should only come at the end of the dispute resolution process, when all other avenues have been exhausted.
It is encouraging that NEC, and now JCT, contracts both support a more collaborative approach to construction and the resolution of disputes, ensuring conflict avoidance can be achieve through contracting mechanisms already in place.
The Conflict Avoidance Pledge
The Conflict Avoidance Pledge has been established by the steering group to encourage organisations to commit to conflict avoidance through early intervention and collaborative working. This pledge is a declaration of intent by parties involved in projects to resolve conflict between themselves, should the need arise, though it does still allow for adjudication if needed.
When an organisation signs the Conflict Avoidance Pledge, the coalition steering group is then able to work with them to make their own internal management aware of the Conflict Avoidance Process and help to embed it in contracts going to tender. This enabled organisations to cultivate a conflict avoidance strategy with their supply chain.
Fair Payment Practices
Trevor spoke to the group about Fair Payments. He took the group through research he’d conducted into publications, guidance and guidelines around prompt and fair payment process.
One of the key challenges to prompt and fair payments is the lack of equality. For simultaneous payments to become standard process, there needs to be equality between all parties involved in the payment process. They also need to have equal ability to influence the terms in contracts for them to truly be considered ‘fair’.
We need industry leadership in fair and prompt payment practices to support industry in implementing these with more consistency and the bring best practice into standard practice.
Whilst there has been progress around collaboration, cooperation, transparency and accountability, there is still some way to go to ensure fair and prompt payments become the norm for the industry.
Get Involved
If you’d like to join the next Procurement Group meeting, register here. Or to find out more about our other groups and events, take a look at our events page.
