

Sarah Priestley
Tree Management Coordinator | City of Greater Geelong
Monday | 1:30pm
TALK TITLE
Contract Management & the Challenges
BIO
Sarah Priestley leads the Tree Management team at the City of Greater Geelong. Responsible for over 180,000 street and park trees the team utilise a hybrid model of in house and contractor arborists to care for the trees. With over 20 years experience in the industry, and over 10 years in Local Government Sarah has been involved in contract management from inception to renewal, both as a Local Government Arborist and a contractor.
ABSTRACT
Contract management is not something many arborists are taught about, we tend to learn on the job, usually when something goes wrong. We are all pretty good at managing the relationships involved in delivering the contract, but how do you make sure you are getting the right information in the tender, evaluating responses in an equitable way not just on cost, and are protected when things go wrong?
The key to effective contract management is to have no surprises, this means building standardised and collaborative processes so everyone knows what and when things are expected of them. This presentation looks at the contract management process in Local Government, from tender development to implementation, and the challenges we face along the way.