Tips for Project Managers: Getting Started with Contractors
Review the Contract in a Face-to-Face Meeting.
- Bring all stakeholders, including the contractor and your agency’s designated compliance administrator, together to ensure all parties have a clear understanding of the contract. At this time, it’s important to:
- Clarify the language in the contract and coach all parties through their questions and common mistakes. Ensure they know exactly what they are signing and that they understand expected deliverables.
- Review the invoice and billing process and provide checklists and templates for invoice requirements.
- Review all federal, state and program-specific requirements, such as HUD‘s requirement to hire Section 3 residents or Section 3 businesses when using Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funding.
- Have contractors sign-off on all forms at the meeting to avoid delays in submitting required paperwork.
- Establish a single point of contact from each agency who will act as the point of communication for all accounting and compliance.
Work with contractors to develop an aggressive but reasonable timeline.
- At the onset of the project, meet with all stakeholders, including architects, construction contractors and inspectors, to develop a timeline for work to be completed that is aggressive but realistic — and make sure they understand they’re committing to that timeline.
- Set up an internal timeline alert system that informs you of when subcontractors haven’t met their deadlines.
- Set due dates for each step along the way. For example, set a deadline for the contractor completing the land survey, because the architect can’t begin his work prior to the completion of the land survey.
Factor in time and funding needed to train contractors.
- Construction contractors, architects and other stakeholders need to be trained on the rules and regulations of the program and what they can and cannot weigh-in on, especially when communicating directly with the applicant.
- HUD’s Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program and many other disaster recovery programs provide funding for contractor training. Dedicate funding to contractor training at the start of the project; if you don’t use all of the funding it can be allocated elsewhere.
- Make sure you have a sign in sheet, agenda, and copy of documents and presentations used in the training – such as a PowerPoint presentation – to submit for a training request to be approved for funding.