B.Y Projects Architecture
“UniPhi has allowed us to apply our existing methodology for Contract Administration in a clear and consistent way to allow our junior architects to step up and gain valuable experience. We have done this without compromising quality for our clients or our contractual obligations. Importantly key approvals stay with me as the Principal Architect without me being a constraint on getting things done.”
Barbara Yerondais Principal Architect
Background
BY Projects Architecture is an architectural practice based in Melbourne primarily undertaking residential and community projects. Led by Barbara Yerondais, Principal Architect with over 30 years’ experience, they offer innovative solutions to architectural environments and have a strong focus on sustainability, accessibility and affordability.
They implement a collaborative approach to all projects and offer a range of services from early feasibility studies through to construction, complete with total project management. As part of their project management services, they offer construction management, contract and post-contract administration.
The Challenge
Barbara, as the Principal Architect, has a great deal of experience in the contract administration phase of projects but needed to focus more time on client management and winning work for the practice. So how to hand over the day to day tasks of contract administration to her team without compromising the quality of her projects?.
Two key challenges were identified as being part of the successful handover of contract administration responsibilities. These were:
Maintaining the quality and consistency of the project delivery
Mentoring less experienced team members in contract administration
The Solution
UniPhi was chosen to manage these complexities as UniPhi allowed BY Projects and Barbara to hand over this project stage without losing sight of it and compromising the quality of BY Project’s contract administration delivery. UniPhi had been chosen as BY Projects’ practice management tool, but the team had discovered during UniPhi’s kick-off workshop that it could also help them with their contract administration as well.
Solving Challenge #1: Ensuring Quality and Consistency
There are two parts of UniPhi which together allowed for a consistent approach to BY Projects’ contract administration methodology. These are UniPhi’s Template system and UniPhi’s Contracts Module.
UniPhi’s Template system allows BY Projects to design contract templates aligned to their contract administration methodology. In these templates each step of this methodology is explained, data is input automatically and controls are set so that each time a contract is created it follows the exact same methodology, ensuring consistency. This in conjunction with the Contracts Module, which keeps track of all contracts, claims, variations, extensions of time and documents all within the one interface means that day to day contract administration tasks have been transitioned easily from Barbara to the junior staff.
Solving Challenge #2: Mentoring the team
UniPhi provides full visibility of all aspects of project contract administration and allows Barbara and the other experienced BY Projects staff to support the team and step in for guidance when required. The methodology for contract administration is laid in UniPhi, so the less experienced team members have an easy to follow format. If they have an issue outside their experience, they can flag it for the attention of the more experienced staff.
