Most construction contract agreements provided the site supervision consultant with the authority to issue oral instructions to the contractor. Those instructions could be to postpone the works, to remedy workmanship, goods or materials which are not in accordance with the contract, to sanction a variation made by the contractor, in relation to the expenditure of provisional sums, to open up work for inspection, to carry out tests or to exclude persons from the site. The contractor must confirm the oral instruction (verbal instruction) to the site supervision consultant within seven days of receiving the verbal instruction. If the site supervision consultant does not dissent from that confirmation within seven days from receipt of the written confirmation, the instruction then takes effect.
Project Management Information Systems (PMIS) like PMWeb can be used to manage, monitor and track verbal instructions on construction projects. PMWeb custom form builder will be used to create the Confirmation of Verbal Instruction (CVI) document template to include all needed fields. Those would usually include details of the verbal instruction such as subject, instruction given by, date, project location and the contractor’s representative who has received the instruction. The form could also have the option to detail the action that the contractor will take until the confirmation of the verbal instruction is received. For example, it can include the following two action options “We are making the necessary arrangements to carry out this work and request that your formal written instructions be issued within 5 days” or “We will not proceed with this work until a formal written instruction is received”.
The attachments tab will be used to upload and attach all documents and project records that are related to the verbal instruction given to the contractor. Those could include for example drawings, pictures, videos and other type of documents or records associated with the verbal instruction.
The workflow assigned for the Confirmation of Verbal Instruction (CVI) will take into consideration all the review, approval and final approval steps needed to confirm the verbal instruction. On selected projects, there could be a need to involve the project owner’s representative and project management consultant in the review cycle.
Similar to other project’s formal communication, an output form will be needed to capture the details of the Confirmation of Verbal Instruction (CVI). The sample output below shows an example of the CVI form with all needed approvals and signatures. The form could be designed in any desired form and format.
The Verbal Confirmation Instruction (CVI) Status Report will aggregate the CVI data across the complete projects portfolio that the organization has. For the selected project or projects portfolio, the dashboard will group the CVIs by reason as well as by location. The dashboard will also show the number of CVIs grouped by the duration it took to confirm the instruction. For durations that are more than 7 calendar days, those will be colored in “Red”. The dashboard will also include a summary tabular log of CVIs.
