Tasks for Senior Supplier >

Complete acceptance sign off for the services and assets.

Schedule any defect rectification with guaranteed timescales.

The capability you have supplied should now be in service and stable.

You should look to provide a managed transition into business as usual support and ensure that your organisation provide the service levels as agreed.

You should seek to share any lessons learned with the project team to ensure they are aware for future projects in both organisations.

Take delivery of legacy assets and ensure they are disposed of in compliance with corporate policy.

It is likely that you will be required to remove the equipment.

You should ensure that there is a full inventory of what should be removed and that it is actually collected. 

A report should be provided to the Project Manager confirming the assets removed and their disposal methods.

Ensure that knowledgeable resources are available to the team to provide technical advice on what services you can provide.

Your involvement will be dependent on your level of integration within the project.

Having your expertise will benefit the project and your own potential services.

As the senior supplier, you should also consider how you will communicate with the other suppliers in the chain and include them in the process.

Provide input and comments on the feasibility of the technical design and potential solutions for achieving it.

You have an important role of assurance for the specification if you have the knowledge.  A common cause of failure is unrealistic expectations - it is around now they can be nipped in the bud if they are beginning to develop.

You should seek input from other elements of the supply chain that you are representing.

Any conflicts of interests must be registered with the Project Manager.

You will be involved in this process if the procurement is going to affect the supply chain or possibly to provide a new partner to the delivery model. 

How your organisation and operating procedures will interface those of the organisation that provides this service will need to be clearly set out as part of the setup.

There may be questions that come out of the review which you may need to answer, so being prepared will be helpful.

As the senior supplier you should be ensuring that communications with other elements of the supply chain are effective and they are involved where appropriate.

Gain sign off from supply chain to the contract.

The new contracts may introduce a new supplier or service into the supply chain, as such, it is your role to ensure that the impact of the contract on the existing supply chain is being considered by the negotiating team.

Ensure issues are recorded as part of the project management processes.

Provide information on asset or personnel performance that will enable an accurate estimate of operating performance to be undertaken.

Your focus should be on the impact on the supply chain and how the existing suppliers, internal and external, will exploit the new capability and services.

This may require contractual or service level changes - these should be logged as issues so that they can be managed as part of the project.

Ensure appropriate resources are in place to respond to questions and issues that arise and ensure they are resolved.

At this point the supplier of the contract will be part of the supply chain and may well have joined the project as well.

Having transparency in the development process and having open dialogue on any issues or challenges that emerge will be key to establishing a good partnership.

Offer opportunities for inspection to prove that the builds are going according to plan.

Ensure that appropriate steps are taken to resolve issues and that the supply chain is in position to supply in line with the transition plan.

This is critical to you so you must ensure that the capability meets the contracted specifications.

If there are areas where you believe it under or over achieves against the specification, it is better to put these on the table at the outset, rather than left to be found out.

Ensure that you have resources available to support the process and react to issues that are arising.

Ensure that issues are managed formally and that there is a focus on resolution - the last thing that you need is an expanding log of issues, this will cause loss of confidence and faith.

Monitor the performance of the services and assets to ensure they are meeting the specifications to achieve performance requirements.

It is highly advisable that you have resources on standby to react to any performance issues that may affect your contractual obligations and commitments.

If positivity is lost or the faults, however minor, make the lives of the operations people more difficult this will have longer term undesirable ramifications.

Check that the baseline performance can be maintained by your products during transition.

You need to be comfortable that testing has been thorough and that you have adequate resources available should contingency be needed.

Monitor the performance of the services and assets.

Ensure they are meeting the specifications to achieve performance requirements.

You should ensure there is a plan to remedy defects and issues that will be needed to achieve full operation.

Complete acceptance sign off for the services and assets. Schedule any defect rectification with guaranteed timescales.

The capability you have supplied should now be in service and stable.

You should look to provide a managed transition into business as usual support and ensure that your organisation provide the service levels as agreed.

You should seek to share any lessons learned with the project team to ensure they are aware for future projects in both organisations.

Manage the provision of expertise to resolve any outstanding issues and authority to sign contracts.

All warranties and service level agreements with you should now be in place and agreed with the customer.

On-going support arrangements according to the contracts should be in place and be part of the testing and acceptance process.

Changes to the supply chain operations, which may have run in parallel, should now be ready for decommissioning.