About the Guidelines

Best practice

The Guidelines stand as a comprehensive statement of local government best practice as to tendering and contracting process based on the author’s extensive experience in advising councils on tender and contract preparation and management.

The Guidelines are intended for local government staff working in the tendering and contracting areas. The Guidelines should be used as a first resource both for the planning and execution of procurement processes and contract management. The Guidelines should provide staff with confidence that they know what they are about and are aware of issues that might arise. The Guidelines are not intended as a substitute for legal advice. However reference to the Guidelines should enable staff to more readily identify when issues have or might arise and understand what such issues might entail. The Guidelines should assist staff to be informed purchasers of services particularly legal services and as a consequence enable better management of legal services expense.

Templates

The Guidelines include 40+ templates providing a valuable start point for document preparation across a range of contract types including consultancy contracts, service contracts and construction/works contracts. The templates range from simple standard form documents suitable for routine low value contracts to more complex documents for relatively major projects. The procurement templates include RFT, RFP and REOI documents together with simple pre-qualification and quotation request letters.

Tender process correspondence is also included together with routine contract management documents such as contract renewal and extension agreements.

Web based and up to date

The Guidelines and templates  are web based. User councils will receive a user name and password.

The Guidelines and templates are not intended to be printed or downloaded onto the council’s system. The essence of web based system is that the Guidelines and templates can be readily updated  both to keep them current and up to date and to correct errors and incorporate improvements on a real time basis.

The Guidelines and templates will be updated at intervals to incorporate legislative changes, practice changes arising from judicial decisions and developments in local government tendering and contracting best practice. The Guidelines and templates will also be subject to a continuous improvement regime  ensuring the guidance provided is clear, relevant and error free and the incorporating of new material either as requested by users or arising from real life situations arising from time to time.

Construction Templates

The Construction Templates Module includes a suite of documents associated with the New Zealand Standards standard form construction contracts NZS 3910 (Building and Civil Engineering Construction) and NZS 3916 (Building and Civil Engineering - Design and Construct).  The Construction Templates include recommended Schedule two amendments to the General Conditions, amended bond, warranty and off-site materials agreement forms together with a number of ancillary documents.

The Construction Templates reflect the author's experience in acting for Councils on infrastructure construction contracts using the New Zealand Standards contract forms over a number of years.  The Construction Templates are adapted for use for local authority infrastructure projects.

The Construction Templates are available on a separate annual subscription basis.

About the author

The Guidelines, Guidelines Templates and Construction Templates were written by Paul Westbury.  Paul is a senior legal practitioner having extensive experience in advising councils in the tendering and contracting areas.

Paul has acted for large and medium to smaller councils and has a reputation for providing pragmatic assistance and advice across the full range of local authority contracting issues.