Scope of Work commonly referred to as S.O.W. is an essential part of the procurement process. The S.O.W. is used to gain an understanding and agreement with contractors, involving the performance needed to complete the organization's required outcomes. The S.O.W. is linked to performance, quality, level of effort, cost, and clarity in the parts/services being presented to bid on. The major impact that S.O.W.'s have on the bid process, this post will cover 5 common mistakes that occur when writing an S.O.W.

1.Too Specific or too Vague

The most common mistakes when writing a S.O.W. involves being too specific or too vague. Both reduce the supplier's ability to apply creative solutions for the bid in the most effective ways. The story told among supply chain departments involves a purchase of fire truck engines, the story goes that a large multi-million dollar order for engines was going through requisition. The SO.W. was written with performance metrics of at least 850HP V12, must fit in a 8X8X5 mounting, and able to move a 17ton vehicle 0-50 in 12 seconds, the result? Only one supplier was able to bid due to the V12 requirement, reducing the competitiveness of the bid, service level, performance, and cost.

2.Internally driven rather than customer driven

The problem arises when internal departments add additional requirements that do not add-value to the customer. It is important to communicate equally among internal groups so that finance, engineering, supply management, and marketing are all on the same page...the customer. Creating a S.O.W. for outsourced resources should be driven with the primary focus of the customer.

3.Inferring obligations

A common error, comes when writing an S.O.W. and inferring obligations. Whether having come off a long relationship with a supplier or turnover who do not know what is common industry obligation. An common example of inferring obligations is the statement, "testing should be done before delivery" this leads to questions and even loopholes that creates bids to be compared apples to oranges. A much more direct clause ,"Supplier duties: test 10 samples using 200PSI water test. Send test report via email to receiving and engineering, attach to packing slip for every delivery" give clearly defined parameters. Helps to remove time, loopholes, and allows competitive apples to apples comparisons.

4.Do not sole source S.O.W. if competition is undesired

This is becoming more and more common with organizations requiring a paper-trail. If a S.O.W. is not required for every purchase in your department there is not a need to have it for a sole-source that all functions have agreed to. A much quicker route, invite the supplier to a facility meeting that has spec., performance, schedule, etc. Write the agreed contract or PO and send everyone on their way to more pressing matters. Especially, when dealing with commodities that have low switching costs.

5.Proofread and provide ALL relevant reference documents

The epitome of document errors proofreading, formatting, and providing correct reference documents. After completing an S.O.W. take a minimum 1 hour before returning to edit, if possible. Read out loud to make sure the words are clear and think from the perspective of the supplier to find ambiguity in the wording that may lead to more questions down the road. When proofreading, coming across a reference be sure to identify the document in a zip file that will be sent to selected suppliers.

Conclusion:

Scope of works vary across multiple ranges from project to project, and these are 5 common mistakes that occur across the board. When writing a scope of work do not fall into these common mistakes, that may hurt, the overall performance of the requisition. Please comment below other mistakes that you have come across involving scope of work.

References and visuals:

Proactive Purchasing in the Supply Chain. (2012). In S. D. David N. Burt, Proactive Purchasing in the Supply Chain (pp. 227-232). New York: McGrawHill.

SHIELDERS S.a. "Our Scope of Work." SHIELDERS. Liteweb, 2009. Web. 21 Oct. 2016. <http://www.shieldersme.com/our-scope-of-work.htm>.