Get the procurement agreement right before supply and site obligations overlap

Because broad agreement usually does not answer the questions that affect delivery once the project is moving. Procurement arrangements can involve ordering responsibilities, lead times, substitutions, delivery coordination, payment triggers, storage issues and interfaces with site work. If those points are not documented properly, the parties can end up arguing about who was meant to do what when delays or cost changes occur. A procurement agreement records those mechanics in legal terms, rather than leaving them to assumptions or scattered correspondence.

It will usually cover the procurement scope, specifications or item categories, pricing and payment timing, ordering authority, delivery obligations, timing expectations, variation steps, defects or non-conforming supply issues, site coordination points, safety-related responsibilities, liability allocation, termination and dispute procedures. The exact mix depends on whether the arrangement is supply-heavy, coordination-heavy or tied closely to broader construction works. Good drafting should reflect the actual procurement workflow, including who approves changes and how project-side dependencies are managed.

Useful details include who the parties are, what is being procured, whether the agreement covers supply only or also coordination, how pricing works, who can authorise changes, where delivery risk sits, and how the procurement role interacts with the wider project team. It also helps to know whether lead times are critical, whether substitute materials may be needed, and whether there are staged deliveries or milestone payments. Those facts shape the legal drafting far more than simply calling the document a procurement agreement.

A standard template may not reflect the way procurement risk actually sits on your project. For example, it may not deal properly with delayed supply, partial delivery, approval bottlenecks, substitution decisions, or the handover point between off-site procurement and on-site responsibility. Those are often the issues that create cost and timing pressure. Tailored drafting is usually more useful where the procurement role is tied to construction sequencing, where multiple parties are involved, or where the commercial structure is more complex than a straightforward supply arrangement.

No. The fixed-fee is for the legal drafting or review of the procurement agreement described on this page, plus one round of amendments. It can cover the contract wording around scope, payment, safety and variations, but it does not include ongoing representation, project administration, regulator filings, tax advice or general management of the procurement process after delivery. If you later need help with related construction documents, negotiations or disputes, that would usually be handled as separate work.

Just submit an enquiry via this page or click the 'get started' button on our website to submit an enquiry. After you've submitted an enquiry, one of our legal consultants will review your enquiry within 1 business day and get in touch to get a better idea of exactly what you are looking for.

Then your legal consultant will send through an email with a bit more information about the services you need, along with a fixed fee quote setting out costs, scope of the service and timing. Have a read through it, and if you're happy with the scope, you can accept and sign our engagement letter online - easy!

Once you've formally accepted, we'll connect you with a specialist lawyer and they will work with you to complete your project. They will contact you by email or phone if they need to get in touch.

Sprintlaw works on fixed-fee pricing wherever possible, so you can review the scope and cost before you decide whether to proceed. For the Construction Procurement Agreement service, pricing starts from $900.00.

After you enquire, a legal consultant will confirm what is included, the expected timing and whether any extra work is needed before you engage us.

We operate completely online, which means we can help you wherever you are in New Zealand. We have office spaces in Sydney, and in Melbourne, but our use of technology allows our team members to work remotely from around the world. Our legal team are mostly based in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. We also have a London office for Sprintlaw UK.

Our legal team is made up of experienced lawyers, who are specialists in various areas of law and hold an Australian legal practising certificate. None of our Sprintlaw lawyers are New Zealand qualified lawyers and they do not currently hold a New Zealand practising certificate.

They provide legal services working remotely from Australia via our 'legal consultancy' model, through which (under section 6 and section 35 of the New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006) our Australian legal team are permitted to provide legal services to New Zealand businesses provided they do not provide services in certain 'reserved' areas of law. You can read our FAQ page to learn a bit more about our 'legal consultancy' model.

Given the strong similarities between Australian and New Zealand law, and the areas of law in which we practice (being small business and startup law), we do not view the fact that our lawyers have not qualified in New Zealand as having any substantive impact on the quality of our service. We are committed to ensuring that we provide high quality, affordable legal services to all our New Zealand clients.

Our legal team have all trained at leading firms, but have left the traditional corporate law world to join us on our mission to create a new and better way of delivering legal services. They have specialist expertise in technology law, intellectual property law, contract drafting and review, corporate law and commercial law.