Amendments - Incorporating Revised Solicitation or just pages

[anoncon]

When amending solicitations I have traditionally included a summary of the changes and attached replacement pages where the solicitation changes. Most cases, realistically, these changes screw up page numbering on the solicitation. Is there any problem with listing a summary of the changes and just including an attachemt with the revised solicitation with the changes clearly marked?

[Cajuncharlie]

The short answer to your question is: No.

Here is a longer answer: There are many different ways, all acceptable, to write amendments of solicitations and modifications of contracts. My personal recommendation would be not to make such a change, but just to tune up your replacement page method.

In my 38 years in the business I have gravitated toward "search and destroy" page change type amendments as a best practice, much preferred over pen-and-ink (a royal pain) or a clean re-write with changes marked (kills too many trees).

Problems with page numbering can be solved easily. First, use an instructions sheet, or summary of changes, that has a column for which pages to remove and which pages to replace them, for example remove page 4 of 26 dated March 2, 2012 and replace with pages 4 and 4a of 26 dated March 9, 2012.

Note the best practice of dating each page, easily done in the footer of a word processing application (but don't know if or how this can be done using the applications that various government agencies use to write amendments).

If you are deleting text, you can use a (mostly) blank replacement page 5 of 26, for example, that simply says "Reserved" or "This page intentionally left blank."

Call me old-fashioned, but my preference is to execute contracts in duplicate original, with each party initialling each page including any exhibits, attachments, and drawings. That way, there is never any question of whether a page is in the contract.

Just my $0.02 worth on the "administration" side of contract administration.

[anoncon]

Thanks for the response CajunCharlie. I think you got to the heart of why I asked, because so much of this process is electronic these days I was thinking the "killing trees" impact would not be as significant and the tidyness of a clean revised version of the original would make for clearer final contract.

The thought of initialling every page including exhibits, drawings and specs of a large construction job is kind of scary, but I bet you've never had any issues with version control.