Our client was the systems integrator on a large IT, finance and HR transformation project for a public sector client. The project was complex, and our client's successful delivery was dependent on a number of third parties – the customer's executive team, its IT delivery team, its professional advisors, customer selected sub-contractors, sub-contractors selected by our client, and hardware and software vendors. Delivery timescales were tight and driven by customer requirements to complete work within a financial year.
Early in the project, it became clear that the customer's requirements had not been accurately set out in the contract documents, and that the original requirements were changing. Further, it became clear that the customer's IT team did not have the capacity or skills to deliver on their own requirements, and that the customer selected sub-contractor's performance was sub-par.
We assisted our client with early-stage discussions over potential project change, and agreed a series of change notes. However, despite the agreed changes the project began to run behind schedule. The customer requested significant additional resources to achieve the original project timetable, but when that additional resource was priced by our client, it became clear that the customer did not have the budget to pay for that additional resource. Our client committed some resources "on spec" to try to get the project timetable back on track, but when it became clear that the original timetable would not be met the customer served a notice requesting a remediation plan within 10 days. We worked with our client to prepare the remediation plan and serve our own counter notices and change requests under the contract in order to protect our client's position. We also drafted correspondence which explained our client's position in relation to the delay, and engaged experts to prepare root cause and delay analysis to support our client's position. We then worked with our client's executive team and other key project stakeholders in negotiations to agree a project re-set, new timetable and formal contractual amendments to allow the project to proceed to a successful resolution.