Contract Administration
The University of Notre Dame Procurement Services Contracts team supports the contract administration and management of contracts that are resultant of Procurement Services solicitations. Any contract routed for review must be accompanied by a Contract Approval Request form, available here.
All other contract needs that are not resultant of Procurement Service solicitations should be directed to General Counsel or responsible contract department.
The significance of contract review depends primarily on the scope of work and meaning of contract. The contract establishes the management, operations, business activities and deeply impacts on and decides the legitimate rights and interests of the University of Notre Dame and our business partners.
How to Accelerate Turnaround
- Engage Procurement as early as possible
- Establish a well-defined and documented scope
- Use existing supplier
- Incorporate standard Notre Dame terms/conditions and control standards into sourcing event (RFX documentation)
- Socialize and/or obtain required approvals early on
- Complete necessary forms as early as possible
Review of the contract includes considering:
Period of performance – term of agreement, right to terminate, subject matter, scope of work, issuing entity specific requirements (reporting, spending and procurement rules), establishing business rules for communication, process for supplier submission of deliverables, inspection, acceptance and payment, and depending on the dollar amount and complexity the Notre Dame Delegate of Authority.
The contract review process involves multiple parties to work in tandem to establish a written business agreement. Contract review begins when the awardee has been selected after responding to a solicitation. The assigned Procurement Specialist will notify awardee of selection. If no changes were requested from awardee in the University of Notre Dame standard terms in the solicitation and no further changes to the scope of work or awardee proposed scope of work; a contract with final scope of work will be presented to the awardee for signature and return.
If there are changes proposed to Notre Dame standard contract terms in the solicitation or changes made to the scope of work after the supplier has submitted a proposal a contract negotiation will be required. Depending on the complexity of the changes, this may engage few to many Notre Dame Departments and stakeholders with back and forth conversations with the awardee. Time in response in each change to the terms is critical in the negotiation stage and depends on many resources.
The chart below provides a guideline to the amount of time needed for the contract review process to support timely business requirement delivery.
Click on the Deal Complexity to determine Contract Risk Level to gauge timeline for review.
Deal Complexity |
Description |
Research and Review (days) |
Negotiate(days) |
Execute and Award (days) |
Estimated Total Contract Review Time (days) |
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2-4 |
2 – 5 |
2 – 3 |
6-12 |
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4-8 |
10-14 |
5-8 |
19-30 |
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8-10 |
8-15 |
5-10 |
21-35 |
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Assumptions |
General
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Dependencies* *Project specific |
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