Claims Administration

Procurement technique · See it on the map

Guide only — Adjudicating a contested claim is a judgment call.

Handling a disputed change to a contract by following the contract's own rules for settling disagreements.

When to use it

As soon as a change to a signed agreement is disputed — a vendor believes extra work was requested outside the original scope, or a buyer believes work billed for was never properly authorised. Open the claim process the moment the disagreement is identified, not after weeks of arguing informally have already hardened both sides' positions.

When to avoid it

It is not for routine change requests both sides agree on — that's a normal contract amendment, not a claim. Reaching for formal claims administration over every minor scope tweak turns a working relationship adversarial faster than it needs to.

Steps

1. Identify the disputed change precisely: what was done, who directed it, and what is being asked for as a result.
2. Check what the contract itself says about how disputes are resolved — negotiation, mediation, arbitration, or litigation — and follow that route rather than an informal one, however reasonable the informal one feels.
3. Document the change and the dispute in writing, even if it started as a verbal instruction — especially if it started as a verbal instruction.
4. Track the claim to resolution and record the outcome against the agreement, so the final record reflects what was actually agreed, not just what was originally signed.

What it produces

• A documented, resolved claim and, if it changes the agreement's terms, an updated record of the agreement

Common pitfalls

• Performing disputed work on a verbal instruction and arguing about payment for it only after the fact — by then there is no record of what was actually asked for, and the dispute becomes about memory instead of fact.
• Skipping the contract's own dispute-resolution process because one side is confident they're right — being right does not substitute for following the route the contract specifies, and skipping it can itself weaken your position later.
• Letting an unresolved claim sit undocumented while work continues, so the eventual dispute is larger and harder to untangle than it needed to be.

Worked example

A vendor renovating a retail space is told by the site manager, over the phone, to add reinforced shelving not in the original scope. The vendor does the work and invoices for it; the buyer refuses to pay, saying the site manager had no authority to approve extra spend. Because neither side confirmed the instruction in writing at the time, resolving it now requires reconstructing a phone call from memory. The contract specifies mediation before either party can pursue further action, and both sides are contractually bound to try that route first, whatever they believe about who is at fault.

Source

• PMBOK-6 §12.3.2

Where it comes from: this technique is named by the PMBOK Guide, 6th edition.