Project Owners need to monitor their engineering consultant’s performance throughout a contract stages of design and construction supervision. In addition, they need to conduct formal performance evaluations at specific points in the contract’s life cycle. These formal evaluations are done at the completion of design and at closeout of construction. The formal consultant performance evaluations are done using the Project Owner’s standard Consultant Performance Evaluation Forms.
The performance evaluation form will be completed by the Project Manager and other Project Owner’s staff members who are working with the consultant on the project. A consultant’s past performance is a major criterion when the Project Owner’s is short-listing consultants for new projects as this helps capturing the project owner’s own experience in working with each consultant.
Using Project Management Information Systems (PMIS) like PMWeb, Project Owners can formalize the process for evaluating and appraising consultants’ performance. Using PMWeb custom form builder, a form for Consultant Performance Evaluation will be created that will be specific for each stage of the contract. The form will include fields to capture the consultant name and comments made by the appraisal on the consultant’s performance. The form will also include a table that will include the categories that the consultant performance is assessed for as well as the specific items that the consultant’s appraisal is carried out. For assessment item there will be a weight value assigned by the Project Owner and a field to capture the evaluation which will be based on a score of 10 where 10 is for superior performance, 8 for excellent performance, 6 for satisfactory performance, 4 for fair performance while 2 is for unacceptable performance.
The attachment tab for the Consultant Performance Evaluation form will be used to attach all documents that relates the consultant’s appraisal. In addition, PMWeb records such as design reviews among others can be also linked to the appraisal.
The Consultant Performance Evaluation form will have a workflow to formalize the evaluation and appraisal review and approval process. The workflow will also serve the purpose of distributing and sharing the consultant’s performance evaluation with the Project Owner’s team who need to be made aware of this appraisal.
The output form for the Consultant Performance Evaluation will have the same design whether it was for the Design Stage appraisal or Construction Supervision Stage appraisal. Of course, the content and values of the assessment will differ depending on the contract stage. The form will also display the total weighted performance score for each stage and the breakdown of this score. The evaluation and appraisal for each consultant can be also consolidated in a report to show the scoring achieved on different projects, current and completed.
