Creating a new Contract

Contracts are registered in Contracts web application. They might be used to register new documents, correspondence, transmittals and control access to documents for contractors. More contracts can always be added later.

To create a new contract, follow steps below.

Step	Instruction
1	Open Contracts web application and fill in the row marked with "*" character.
2	Click outside the grid or on another row to ensure the Contract is saved, then click on the "Contract No" hyperlink to open Contract Details page.

Copying Contract Settings

To simplify a setup of a new Contract, you can copy over most of the setting from another existing Contract for a quick start. By clicking the "Copy Settings From..." button in the toolbar, users can bring up the "Copy Settings" dialog. In the dialog, users can select precisely which sections of the contract setup should be copied over. The text in the parenthesis clarifies how the copying will be done for each section - the copied data either being added to the current setup's data or overwriting it.

Setting up a Contract

The table below provides a detailed description of fields of general contract settings:

Contract Members

Contracts Members tab is used to add new members to contract and manage their correspondence permissions. Users set as members of a contract are able to access its documents, correspondence, incoming and outgoing transmittals, and all other related information.

New contract members are added by selecting required login from lookup in the grid.

Correspondence permissions can be modified by clicking "Show Correspondence Settings" button and choosing required values in the expanded grid. 

The table below provides a detailed description of correspondence settings:

Company Codes

Contract's Company might have several different codes. Company Codes tab is used to define which Company Codes can be used as Originator Company when creating new documents. 

New company code can be added by selecting required plant no and company code from lookups.

Contract Documents

Contract Documents contains an overview of documents that Company is delivering as a part of a contract, such as HSE requirements, guidelines, standards, procedures and similar. These documents are mainly internally produced by Company, but can also include items produced outside Company such as standards, documents from FEED phase or other documents produced by contractors/suppliers.

Contracts Documents tab is used to add a specific revision of the document, however later revisions can also be shared with contract members.

New contract documents are added by clicking "Add Contract Documents" button and in the opened dialogue selecting required documents from the required domain. Note that appendix number is mandatory.

The table below provides detailed description of other actions available in this tab. 

Linked Items

Also housed in the Contract Documents tab is the Linked Items functionality. The Linked Items system allows to reference various types of items across Pims. For objects to be usable as references, they will first need to be configured in the Linked Items Setup. You can read more about the Linked Items system in its dedicated article.

In this case, items are linked to individual contract documents so the data in the linked items grid may change when selecting a different documents in the contract documents grid.

Default Confidentiality List

Default Confidentiality List is used to define users who are added to a confidentiality list by default when a document (or a correspondence) of this contract becomes confidential.

Interface Documents

Interface Documents tab is used to define which contracts will be able to request interface documents from the current contract. New interface contracts can be set up by going to the Interfaces section and creating a new row.

Added contracts’ members with specific roles will be able to request interface documents while members of the selected contract will be able to manage access to them.

The table below provides information about other settings in "Interface Documents" table that also might be useful:

A list of contracts that have set up an interface with the current contract can be found in the Sources section.

In both the Interface and Source sections, you can see an overview of the notifications for each contract by clicking on the icon in the Notification column while will open a dialog. There you can see all the actions that will cause notifications to be sent and the receivers of those notification in the Default Notification Setup grid. Additional receivers can be added through the Additional Notification Setup grid where you can add new receivers and select which actions they will be notified about. You will be able to select receivers from both the source and interface contracts.

That process of managing notification receivers might become a bit slow and repetitive when working with larger numbers of interfaces and receivers. For that, a separate dialog exists which carries out operations on all filtered interface contracts at once. It can be opened by pressing the "Add/Remove/Replace Notification Receivers" button. The dialog consists of three tabs which correspond to the three ways of managing notification receivers: Add, Remove and Replace.

In each of the tabs, a member of the current contract must be selected as a receiver, along with the interface actions that will be affected. Additionally, the "Add" tab allows to select the receiver type for each action and even to update that receiver type for existing notification setups if the "Update Email Recipient Type for existing Receivers/Interface Actions" checkbox is checked. Meanwhile, the "Replace" tab adds a second lookup to select the receiver to be replaced.

3rd Party Verifiers

3rd Party Verifiers tab is used to define contracts which will be able to be assigned for documents 3rd party verification.

New contracts are added by selecting required contract no in "Verification Contract No" field. Only contracts that have the "Verification" type and a have different company from the current contract can be selected as verifiers.

Other available settings:

Templates

The Templates tab is used define what correspondence or cover page templates can be used in the contract. To be selectable here, a template must be set as a contractor template in the DCS Configuration app.

Settings

The table below provides a detailed description of options in the "Settings" tab.

Field	Description
Review Deadline	Number of days given to review a document by default.
Reserved for Review Responsible	The number of days reserved for the Review Responsible to carry out their work. The additional days are not gained by adding days to the review deadline but by subtracting days from all other review receivers' deadlines. NB: The "Review Responsible" in the setting's label will be changed to the name for that action type in your Pims instance. In the instance shown in the screenshot above, that action type is named "Comments Responsible"
Reserved for Review Leader	The number of days reserved for the Review Leader to carry out their work. Works like "Reserved for Review Responsible" but affects only regular reviewers. NB: The "Review Leader" in the setting's label will be changed to the name for that action type in your Pims instance.
Response Deadline	The number of days a contractor has to submit a new revision after review response was returned with comments.
Revision Reservation Period	The number of days a contractor has to submit a revision after reserving it.
Calendar	A calendar used to count working days. If set, e.g. review deadline will be calculated by adding the defined number of working days (according to this calendar) to the issued date. If not set, default project calendar will be used.
Max Email Size (MB)	Maximum size of the attachments to be automatically added to emails sent from Pims. If size of files to be sent by email exceeds the defined limit, the files are not attached. Max Email Size limit is 25 MB. NB: The max email size should take into account any limitations imposed by the platform used to send the emails. For example, if the platform increases file sizes, the max email size limit should be lowered.
Contract Type	"Client" value is set to identify a contract with your customer and impact Client Acceptance Code field.
	"Verification" value is set to identify third party verifies, available in 3rd Party Verification setup.
	"Classification" value is set to identify a classification authority. Classification authority refers to the power and responsibility of a classification society to establish and enforce standards for a particular industry or field. This authority is typically granted by regulatory bodies and is recognized by stakeholders in the relevant industry. Classification societies with classification authority have the power to survey, inspect, and certify compliance with the applicable rules and regulations. They also play a role in promoting best practices and technological innovation in their respective industries.
	"Construction" (only available in "Contract" Domain type), to identify contracts used for construction/fabrication.
	Other non-system-specific contract types can be blank.
Inactive	When set, contract members can't assign new Documents, Correspondence, Transmittals to the selected contract.
Require DCC validation of contractor submittals	When this option is enabled, contractors' submittals are placed into the "Contractors Submittals Import" buffer, where the DC can validate submitted documents before importing them to the Documents register. Otherwise documents will be imported into the Documents register directly. Additionally, when this setting is enabled, a custom submittal notification email can be set up for the contract this. This email would be sent after a contract member from the contract company submitted documents through the Upload Documents app. It will be sent instead of the notification email generated with the "EmailTemplateContractorNewRevisionsUploadWithDccNotification" template. To set up this custom email, click on the icon next to this setting's label. In the dialog that opens, information about the email can be filled in. Multiple receivers can be listed in the CC and BCC fields by separating them with semicolons. The body and subject fields can also be left empty to replace get their values from the regular template.
Automatic submittal cover page content verification	Allows for files associated with this contract to have their cover pages checked automatically in the Contractor Submittals Import app.
Automatically distribute submittals	Every new revision will automatically be sent for distribution and if step of the revision is requiring review the revision will automatically be sent for review.
Inform originator immediately after review finalization	When this option is enabled, automatic email will be sent to DCC mailbox after the review of the Document by the Contract is finalized. When this option is disabled, an outgoing transmittal needs to be sent for contractor to be able to upload a next revision.
Enable files upload after review has been closed	Allows to keep uploading files for revisions even if those revisions have closed (finalized, cancelled, expired) reviews. When such uploads occur, the domain and contractor DCCs will be informed by a notification email.
Enable review comments responses	When this option is enabled, documents originator will be able to reply to review comments (response comments fields will be available in Review app; response comments will be parsed from XLS/PDF files uploaded as reply files; files will be saved in Pims).
Enable text review comments	Allows to add text review comments that are not assigned to a specific file or it's part.
Limit Distribution to Own Company	This setting affects CC list of Message/Letter corr. types and Distribution feature. It limits receivers to contract members from senders’ company. If this setting is disabled, then it allows to select receivers from all contracts members. When this option is enabled, correspondence will be allowed to be distributed only inside company.
Use in Correspondence	Allows to assign correspondence to the selected contract.
Include Correspondence Content in Email	Includes correspondence content into email notification sent to receiver and all CCs.

NB: the first four settings (the ones related to review deadlines) are contract-level versions of domain settings that can be set in the DCS Configuration app. If they have values set, then those value will be used instead of the domain-level settings' values.

Settings in "Correspondence Internal User Permissions" table sets correspondence permissions to internal company members. These settings are hierarchical so users that are able to send letter will also be able to create it.

Additional Settings

There are several other settings that are expected to be used rather rarely. To prevent them getting in the way when they aren't being used, they have been moved into their own dialog. That dialog can be opened by clicking the "Additional Setup" button in the top right of the app.

Alternative Addresses

Alternative addresses are used to provide additional receivers to the ones that contracts are regularly set up with. The can used both by individual users to contact the people lists and by the system in several processes. The provided emails can be used as CCs for emails sent during several DCS processes (3rd Party Verifications, Review Finalization, Sharing Documents and Correspondence, Submittals) while the provided addresses can be selected as an alternative address when setting up outgoing transmittals.

Attentions

The people listed in the attentions tab can be set as attentions for outgoing transmittals that use the contract. The top grid can be used to add people that do not use Pims while the bottom grid shows contract members that can already be selected.

Auto-Distribution Steps

Steps selected in the Auto-Distribution Steps tab, will be automatically selected when creating new rows in the External Distribution grid of the Distribution Setup dialog in the Document Details app.

Review Statuses

The grid in the Review Statuses tab allows to add review statuses that can be selected while conducting document reviews for a documents or projects that uses the contract. They will appear instead of the domain-wide review statuses which can be set in the DCS Configuration app.

Reason for Issue

The grid in the Reason for Issue tab allows to add options that can be selected in the Upload Documents app to show the purpose of the revision being uploaded.

The checkbox above the grid also allows to set "Reason for Issue" as a mandatory field when submitting uploaded revisions.