Poor contract management costs organizations $2 trillion every year. That is the figure from Deloitte and DocuSign research on the global cost of contract failures, disputes, and value leakage from contracts that are poorly drafted, inadequately monitored, or never enforced. Most organizations sign contracts and then file them. The ones that actively manage their contracts consistently extract more value, face fewer disputes, and spend significantly less resolving the ones they do face. This course is for professionals who want to be in that group.

Course Overview

The Contract Management and Administration program is a comprehensive, practical course for procurement professionals, contract managers, project managers, legal professionals, and commercial managers who want to develop rigorous contract management capability across the full contract lifecycle.

The program covers contract formation and key clauses, contract administration during performance, managing contractor performance, handling variations and claims, dispute resolution, and contract closeout. It applies to all major contract types used in commercial, construction, services, and public sector environments.

Available as an instructor-led classroom course at scheduled venues worldwide, as a fully live online program, and as a customized in-house program. Every format is live and interactive. There are no pre-recorded sessions.

Who Delivers This Program

Every session is facilitated by a practitioner with direct experience managing commercial contracts in real organizational settings. Our facilitators have managed contracts on large capital projects, government programs, outsourcing arrangements, and complex services agreements. They bring experience of contract disputes, claims management, and the commercial negotiation that keeps contracts on track when they start to go wrong. Facilitators are selected based on the industry and contract type profile of each cohort, with strong familiarity with Gulf-region contracting environments and FIDIC, NEC, and common law contract frameworks.

How We Make This Relevant to You Specifically

Before every cohort, each participant completes a pre-course profile covering their role, the types of contracts they manage, the challenges they face in contract administration and dispute management, and what they need most from this program. Facilitators review every profile before the first session. All case studies and contract exercises throughout the program are drawn from the contract types and commercial environments that participants actually work in.

What You Will Learn

By the end of this program, you will be able to:

Understand and interpret contract terms
Read and apply the key clauses that determine rights, obligations, and risk allocation in commercial contracts.

Administer contracts through the performance period
Build and manage the systems, records, and processes that protect your organization’s position throughout contract performance.

Manage contractor performance effectively
Design and operate performance measurement frameworks that incentivize delivery and provide early warning of problems.

Handle variations, claims, and changes
Process contract variations and claims in a way that protects organizational value and maintains productive contractor relationships.

Manage contract risk
Identify and mitigate the contractual risks that lead to disputes, cost overruns, and delivery failures.

Resolve disputes constructively
Apply dispute avoidance and resolution techniques that protect commercial relationships and avoid costly formal proceedings.

Work effectively with legal and commercial teams
Understand the legal and commercial dimensions of contracts well enough to brief lawyers effectively and make informed commercial decisions.

Close out contracts properly
Complete contracts in a way that confirms obligations are met, retentions are released, and lessons are captured for future contracts.

Course Outline

The program follows the full contract lifecycle across nine modules. Depth and sequencing are calibrated to your format and customization agreed in the pre-course needs assessment.

Module 1: Contract Fundamentals and Legal Principles

Essential contract law for non-lawyers: offer and acceptance, consideration, capacity, legality, conditions and warranties, the difference between common law and civil law contracting environments, and contract types used across commercial, construction, services, and government sectors.

Module 2: Key Contract Clauses and Risk Allocation

Scope of work and specifications, price and payment terms, delivery and milestones, performance standards and liquidated damages, liability and indemnity, force majeure, termination rights, IP ownership, confidentiality, dispute resolution clauses, and the risk allocation implications of each.

Module 3: Contract Administration Systems and Records

Contract management plans, obligation registers, key date tracking, correspondence management, formal notification requirements under the contract, document control and audit trail, and the administrative discipline that protects your organization’s legal position throughout performance.

Module 4: Contractor Performance Management

KPIs and performance metrics for service and supply contracts, contract performance reviews, early warning indicators of delivery failure, managing underperformance formally and informally, using contract levers (notices, retention, liquidated damages) proportionately and effectively, and maintaining a productive contractor relationship while enforcing obligations.

Module 5: Variations, Changes, and Contract Amendments

Change management in contracts: the difference between variations, instructions, and informal changes; the cost and program impact of change; variation pricing and valuation; managing the scope creep that arises from poorly defined change control; and protecting the original commercial position when change is inevitable.

Module 6: Claims Management

What a claim is and how it arises, the distinction between claims and disputes, extension of time claims, additional cost claims, global claims, claim prevention through good contract administration, assessing and responding to claims, and managing the commercial negotiation of claim resolution.

Module 7: Dispute Avoidance and Resolution

Why contract disputes arise and what behavioral and administrative factors most frequently cause them, early neutral evaluation and partnering approaches, negotiation, mediation, adjudication, arbitration, and litigation as escalating dispute resolution options, and how to make commercially rational decisions about when to fight and when to settle.

Module 8: Contract Types in Practice

FIDIC conditions (Red, Yellow, Silver, Gold books), NEC4 contract, LOGIC and CRINE conditions for oil and gas, IT and services agreements, outsourcing contracts, framework agreements and call-off contracts, and the specific administration challenges of each contract type. Gulf-region contracting law and practice included.

Module 9: Contract Closeout and Your Development Plan

Formal contract closeout process, final account settlement, defects liability period management, retention release, lessons learned, and building a personal contract management development plan that participants implement on return to their organization.

What This Investment Returns to Your Organization

For HR Directors and L&D leaders, the commercial case for contract management training is straightforward. The cost of contract failures, disputes, and value leakage from poorly managed contracts is staggering. The cost of training the people who manage those contracts is not.

$2T

wasted globally every year due to poor contract management, including value leakage, disputes, and the cost of contracts that fail to deliver what was agreed.
Source: Deloitte / DocuSign

8-12%

cost savings achievable through structured supplier and contract management programs, versus organizations that manage contracts purely transactionally after award.
Source: Deloitte Global Chief Procurement Officer Survey

27%

average cost overrun on large projects, driven partly by poor change control and claims management that allows contractor costs to escalate beyond contracted scope.
Source: McKinsey Global Institute

65%

of executives identify procurement and supply chain costs as their biggest savings opportunity. Active contract management is a primary mechanism through which that savings potential is realized.
Source: BCG 2024

Beyond the numbers: Organizations with strong contract management capability extract more value from their contracts, face fewer disputes, resolve the ones they face more quickly and at lower cost, and build the contractor relationships that deliver consistently better performance over time.

Is This the Right Program for You?

This program is ideal if:

You manage or administer commercial contracts in any capacity
Your organization suffers from contract disputes, claims, or value leakage
You need to understand contract risk and how to manage it
You work in procurement, project management, legal, or commercial roles

Consider a different program if:

Your focus is on the broader strategic procurement function, see PROC-01
Your focus is specifically on supplier negotiation, see PROC-03

Talk to a training advisor if you are unsure.

Who Should Attend

Contract managers and administrators in construction, infrastructure, oil and gas, IT, and services sectors
Procurement professionals responsible for contract award and administration
Project managers who manage contracts as part of project delivery
Commercial managers and business development professionals
Finance and legal professionals who work with commercial contracts

No legal background required. Participants from all industries welcome. Delivered in English. Arabic delivery available for in-house programs on request.

How We Customize This Program for Your Organization

Your contract typesAll case studies and contract exercises are based on the contract forms your organization actually uses, whether FIDIC, NEC, bespoke commercial agreements, or government standard forms.

Your sector challengesClaims and dispute scenarios reflect the specific contracting risks that are most common in your industry and geography.

Live contract reviewsWhere participants bring anonymized examples of current contracts or disputes, facilitators work through them as real-world exercises during the program.

Legal and commercial team integrationFor organizations wanting to improve the working relationship between legal, commercial, and operational teams, we can design joint sessions that build shared understanding across functions.

What Past Participants Say

“We had a dispute with a major contractor that had been running for eight months. I attended this course mid-dispute and came back with a completely different understanding of our position and what levers we actually had. We settled within six weeks for a fraction of what the contractor was claiming.”

Commercial Manager, Infrastructure, Saudi Arabia

“The variations and claims module should be mandatory for every project manager. I had no idea how many times I had unwittingly approved changes that had no formal variation order behind them. My contracts are much better administered now.”

Project Director, Construction, UAE

Delivery Format

In-Person Classroom

Full days, 9am to 5pm
Maximum 15 participants per cohort
Scheduled venues globally
Materials, templates, and workbook included

Live Online

Live instructor-led, never pre-recorded
Flexible time-zone scheduling
Fully interactive with breakout groups
Same outcomes and certificate as classroom

In-House / Corporate: Delivered for your contract and commercial team anywhere in the world. Request a proposal.

Pricing

The following fees apply to the standard 5-day public course delivered in Saudi Arabia and the GCC.

$3,950

Per delegate
Individual booking

$3,555

Per delegate
Groups of 3 to 5 (10% off)

$2,963

Per delegate
Groups of 6 to 10 (25% off)

Fees include all materials, workbook, and certificate. For venues outside the GCC, see the Training Calendar. For in-house delivery, contact us for a proposal.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a legal background to attend?

No. The program is designed for commercial and operational professionals who work with contracts but have no formal legal training. Legal concepts are explained in plain language with practical application throughout. Participants with legal backgrounds also attend and find significant commercial value in the program.

Which contract types does the program cover?

The program covers principles applicable to all commercial contracts and uses case studies from construction (FIDIC, NEC), oil and gas (LOGIC, CRINE), IT and technology, professional services, outsourcing, and supply agreements. For in-house delivery we focus specifically on the contract types your organization uses.

Is Gulf-region contract law covered?

Yes. The program includes specific content on contracting in Gulf-region legal environments, including the differences between civil law and common law contract frameworks that affect how contracts are interpreted and enforced in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, and other GCC markets.

What certificate do participants receive?

Every participant receives a TheSkillGrid Certificate of Completion in Contract Management and Administration, which can be added to LinkedIn and is recognized by employers internationally.

Research sources cited on this page:
Deloitte / DocuSign. Poor contract management costs $2 trillion globally per year.
Deloitte. Global Chief Procurement Officer Survey. deloitte.com
McKinsey Global Institute. Delivering large-scale IT projects on time, on budget, and on value. mckinsey.com
BCG. Supply Chain and Procurement: The CEO Agenda 2024. bcg.com

Upcoming Dates & Venues

No sessions currently scheduled.
Contact us to register your interest — we'll notify you when new dates are confirmed, or arrange a private cohort for your team.

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Join the next scheduled cohort or request private in-house delivery for your team.

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Contract Management and Administration