Abstract:
In today’s fast competition full and frantic activities of the global economy, to stay ahead of the
pack companies have to embrace effective project management in order to consistently deliver
business results. As most of projects are complex and multi-disciplinary, to keep them on track
and constantly monitor the results, effective oversight of contracts is critically important. On the
other hand, poor management of contracts ensue range of risks; from being forced to close the
projects due to breaking of the law to struggling on with supplier disputes. There is no doubt,
that effective contract management is paramount for it guarantees organization in realizing its
business value by successfully delivering projects on time and within budget. The objective of the
study was to assess the impact of procurement contract management on the effectiveness of
project management at Ethio Telecom, Jimma branch. A descriptive study design was used for
this research and for the sake of data sources all members of the Procurement and Supply Chain
department of Ethio- Telecom, Jimma branch was used. Primary and secondary data were used.
Through well-organized questionnaires and interview data were collected. The collected data
were processed, analyzed by SPSS 20 Edition software and presented in the table, charts and
words. This research has discovered that there is a very high dependency of effective project
management on suppliers’ compliance with terms and conditions, suppliers’ technical capability
and close monitoring of suppliers during project implementation. Therefore, procurement
contract management is essential for effective project management. The researcher recommends
Ethio-telecom Jimma branch to recruit more experienced and qualified staff for its contract
management function, to have procurement contract management solution in order to have
visibility of its active contracts at every stage of the project lifecycle, to have strong technical
supplier evaluation and to secure and enforce penalty clauses for suppliers’ breach of project
contracts.
