Using Contract Health Check and Contract RAG Reports

This article is a guide to using the Contract Health Check report and Contract RAG report in FastDraft.

This guide contains the following:

• Using the Contract Health Report
• Using the Contract RAG Report
• How to use RAG reporting
  • Project teams
  • Framework managers and divisional team leads

Related articles:

• Using the Contract Dashboards and Registers
• Using RAG Notifications Panel
• Using Aggregated Reports
• Using Third Party Reporting Tools

Using the Contract Health Report

The Contract Health Check Report displays key metrics for the contract that you are working on, in much the same way as the Contract Dashboard, but is date stamped and can be exported or printed to be shared with third parties outside the platform.

It does not display aggregated metrics across all of your contracts, only the contract you are logged in to. To view your contract data across multiple projects use the Aggregated Reporting Tool.

The language on the Contract Health Check Report is designed to be contract neutral so that it looks and feels familiar if you are comparing two different contract types.

The Contract Health Check Report provides a summary of the following metrics:

• Project team members
• Contract Price
• Contract Date
• Planned Progress and Programme Date
• Payments
• Outstanding Actions
• A summary of contract Risks or Early Warning 
• Change or Compensation Events
• Calendar of notice deadlines

The Contract Health Check Report can be used in conjunction with the Registers so that you can drill down into the Registers to investigate bottlenecks or a specific notice.

Each of the metrics can be drilled into with the following respective Register, to find answers:-

• Project team members - Contract User list
• Contract Price -  Implemented Compensation Events Register and Contract Overview page
• Contract Date - Implemented Compensation Events Register and Contract Overview page
• Planned Progress and Programme Date - Contractor Programme Register
• Payments - Payment Certificate and Payment Application Register
• Outstanding Actions - Notification panel or Contract RAG Report
• Risk or Early Warning - Early Warning Register
• Change or Compensation Events - Implemented Compensation Events Register
• Calendar of notice deadlines - Notification panel or Contract RAG Report

Using the Contract RAG Report

The Contract RAG Report works much in the same way as the notification panel and displays the RAG status of each outstanding notice on a contract, but unlike the notification panel is date stamped and can be exported as a PDF for audit purposes or distribution to users outside the platform. 

This report provides a summary all the outstanding actions:

• for each Party,
• the notice reference number,
• subject line,
• the date the action is due by,
• a hyperlink to the notice for quick access and
• a RAG status (Red, Amber or Green). 

• All all actions due less than 1 day are marked as red.
• All actions due less than 7 days are amber
• All actions greater than 7 days are green. 

All actions due within the next day or overdue will be red, all actions less than 7 days will be amber and anything due over 7 days + will be green.

Again this report is dynamic so only displays roles relevant to the contract type.

How to use RAG reporting

The RAG reporting can be used a couple of different ways to help support delivering contracts on time, to budget and to the right quality standards, but as mentioned earlier the main benefit of this report over the notification panel is it can be exported as a PDF or printed.

Project teams

The most common use of this report is by project teams to keep track of what needs doing today, this week and in the next fortnight. The split view between the parties also quickly flags if a particular party to the contract is struggling. Late decision making is the number one cause of project delays and it is common for construction projects to have lots of changes (read new decisions) due to the nature of the industry and inherent unknowns from ground conditions, design interfaces and weather conditions. We suggest that you monitor this closely and escalate issues quickly with the other side at progress meetings when they are AMBER to avoid delays. If you have a significant backlog of actions, you may also wish to escalate it with your line manager after speaking with the individuals concerned. With the average spend rates per week on projects being high, each day an action is overdue will be expensive for the project.

Framework managers and divisional team leads

The RAG reporting can also be a useful way of checking the health of the project at a glance, when managers need to understand the status of a project. The use of the RAG status on actions when combined with our Aggregated reporting, Health Check Report or API integration in to third party reporting tools, provide managers with the tools they need to spot the project that needs help before it's too late.