Contract Admin 101

Design is an instruction, just like a contract.

Contract Administration is an activity required to ensure the building described in the contract document is
in fact the building that gets built. It also includes the processes to initiate change and record progress.

These documents tend to be grouped as:

  • Coordinating Documents: Minutes, Deficiency Lists, Memos, General Reviews, and Letters

  • Approval Process Documents: Instructions, Notices, Orders and Certificates

  • Advice and Consent Process Documents: Shop Drawing and Sample Reviews


Each of the documents must be created, entered, stored, published and retrieved throughout the contract administration stage.

Who needs Contract Admin?

To the surprise of some, contract administration is required by every organization, every discipline, and every project regardless of what is being built. Our experience at Statslog shows that users include the full range of employees, from clerks, receptionists, executive assistants, site representatives, project managers, to associates and/or partners. Our users also come from a wide variety of business and organizations—architects, engineers, retail chains, school and hospital boards, mining companies, general contractors, provincial ministries and federal departments.

Projects include: mines in Chile and Tunisia; embassies in China, Korea, USA and Canada; hospitals, condos, schools, and airports. Although collaboration is a desirable goal, in most cases, contract administration is the singular responsibility of the project architect.

Case Study #1: Office Retrofit

An office retrofit project with three clients, two architects (base building, interior partitions), an internal and contracted project manager and construction manager. After three months of construction, this team could not agree on the current contract value. Within one month, a project database was established by Statslog and monitored for the duration of the job. The subsequent four audits all had a positive outcome, which attests to the robustness of our database and embedded calculations.

Case Study #2: Tunisian Mine

Our client was administering construction of a mine and its above-ground structures in Tunisia. The assignment was to create forms with the local currency (Dinars) and using Parisian French as the language of communication. Translators provided the text of the Form, the $ symbol was changed to ‘D’ relocated to the end of the currency, and a regional keyboard solved the day-to-day entry. The project was completed without further involvement, demonstrating the highly customizable features of our software.

Statslog has recently created a new sample project called OOTB: ‘Out-of-the-Box’ to present form and report templates that demonstrate the benefits of a relational database applied to contract administration.

There is no “one true” way to perform contract administration. Various contract types, client-specific requirements, and unique regional and jurisdictional factors all dictate that a Contract Admin solution must adapt to your needs and not the other way around. FIVE does not force a workflow onto clients, rather it allows clients to assign read-only access to their project team. The client can also layer security internal for operational control.

We are currently developing:

  • A series of wall/poster diagrams showing the review cycles of Change Approval, Progress Approval, and Shop Drawing Processes

  • A broadside publication describing the contents and purpose of OOTB

  • A Student Manual on lessons learned from the development of OOTB

  • A book describing why the OOTB approach should be adopted by design professionals

FIVE by Statslog, uses technology to make contract administration in the office of a design professional more efficient. This product is possible because of techniques of relational database management (RDM). This methodology allows a user to collect a vast amounts of information, and also allows rapid access to that information, with little effort.

Rapid access, however does not mean the sender should truncate, or otherwise make short, the content of the communication. FIVE respects and encourages complete descriptions and lets the technology: organize, store, retrieve, publish, and distribute forms and reports that replicate the material and brand it to your needs.

  • The new sample project file includes forms and reports for each Tab. These follow the general principles of Canada's “CCDC 24 model forms and reports for CCDC–2, ”, but with the addition of the exclusive “FIVE by Statslog” features.

  • Each form has a description box that is populated with: what is the work, who is responsible, where it is located, when it is to be done, and why it is needed.

These forms also go beyond CCDC 24 and offer, not only the first page of a Supplemental Instruction, Proposed Change, Change Directive, Change Order, and Certificate for Payment; but also offers:

  • text continuation page(s)

  • an image page(s)

  • an attachment page(s) as needed


    Along with new forms for:

  • Shop Drawing Transmittals

  • Field Reviews

  • Minutes of Meetings

  • Deficiency List

  • Letterhead with a cover page for each

  • Each form has a matching Log for data entry, which will auto-populate the Form being presented. Other Logs will present their data sorted by the 5Ws: WHAT, WHERE, WHY, WHEN, and WHO, collected.

  • Forms (called “templates”, when on screen) and Report (called a “log” when onscreen) are presented in a sample project, along with an easy to install logo, company name and address lines.

This OOTB Sample Project will allow a FIVE user, to more easily navigate start-up and analysis collected data at close-out.