EPC Contracts Course — Owner's Perspective
Know What You Signed. Protect What You Own. Deliver What You Promised.
Master the commercial, legal, and operational controls needed to safeguard the owner’s balance sheet on major EPC capital projects.
“Contract strategy is the most important aspect of a project because it forms the foundation on which everything else is built.”
In EPC projects — Engineering, Procurement, and Construction — the contract is not merely a legal document. It is the blueprint for how risk is shared, how money flows, how performance is measured, and ultimately whether the project succeeds or becomes a source of disputes, claims, and losses.
Yet the vast majority of project professionals — engineers, contract administrators, project managers, and owner representatives — have never been formally trained to read, understand, and administer an EPC contract from the owner's side of the table. They inherit contracts they did not shape, manage contractors whose full obligations they cannot articulate, and find themselves unprepared when disputes arise.
This course changes that. Delivered across five structured days, EPC Contracts from the Owner's Perspective equips you with the knowledge, frameworks, and practical tools to approach every EPC contract with intelligence, authority, and confidence — from contracting strategy through to dispute resolution.
Who This Course Is For
- Owner-side project managers and engineers responsible for EPC contract oversight and contractor performance management
- Contract administrators and procurement professionals who need deeper understanding of EPC contract structures, obligations, and risk allocation
- Project owners and client representatives in oil & gas, construction, power, and infrastructure sectors
- Engineering managers and team leaders whose decisions affect contract compliance and project outcomes
- Anyone who signs, administers, or is bound by EPC contract terms and needs to understand what they are committing to
What You Will Learn
By the end of this course, you will be able to:
DAY 1 — THE CONTEXT OF EPC CONTRACTS
- Understand where EPC contracts originate — tracing the path from an owner organization's strategic need, through stage-gate approvals, to the award of an EPC package
- Make and justify Make-or-Buy decisions using a structured analysis of strategy, risk, quality, capability, and support considerations
- Identify the key factors that shape contracting strategy: project objectives and characteristics, types of contracts, tendering process, conditions of contract, and risk allocation principles
- Understand the fundamental purpose of a contract as a vehicle for procuring services — and why an unclear, poorly defined Scope of Work is the single greatest source of project disputes, claims, and cost overruns
DAY 2 — ELEMENTS OF PROJECT RISK MANAGEMENT
- Define individual project risk and overall project risk — and understand how each is identified, analysed, and managed differently
- Execute the complete risk management process: Plan Risk Management, Identify Risks, Perform Qualitative Analysis, Perform Quantitative Analysis, Plan Responses, Implement Responses, and Monitor Risks
- Understand how the level of project definition directly determines contract risk — and why unclear or incomplete scope is not just a planning problem but a contracting problem that drives cost growth and adversarial relationships
DAY 3 — CONTRACT ESSENTIALS
- Define a contract and articulate the key elements required for a valid, legally binding agreement in the EPC context
- Understand precisely what must be stated in every contract regarding the seller's obligations (Scope of Work) and the buyer's payment obligations — and the contractual and financial consequences of ambiguity in either
- Recognize the major EPC contract types — Lump Sum (Fixed Price), Cost-Reimbursable, and hybrid structures — and understand when each is appropriate, how each allocates risk between owner and contractor, and what each demands of the contract administration team
DAY 4 — UNDERSTANDING THE OWNER'S PERSPECTIVE
- Understand that the EPC project is a means to an end — the realization of business value or strategic benefit — and that the owner's primary measure of success extends well beyond schedule adherence and budget compliance
- Appreciate that massive business benefit can offset schedule and budget overrun — and conversely, that a project delivered on time and on budget can still be a strategic failure if it does not deliver the intended benefits
- Define, interpret, and apply Liquidated Damages clauses — understanding their commercial purpose, their legal limitations, how they are calculated, enforced, and challenged, and how to use them as a performance management tool
- Identify the attributes of a high-performing supplier and use them as a structured framework for contractor evaluation, selection, and ongoing performance management
DAY 5 — CONTRACT ADMINISTRATION & PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT
- Apply the core principles of Contract Administration — the systematic process that ensures the contractor delivers what the owner paid for, from contract award through final acceptance and closeout
- Manage contract compliance using structured tools: monitoring contractor performance against obligations, tracking and expediting deliveries, handling deviations, and maintaining a complete contract administration record
- Recognize frequently encountered contract-related problems during EPC project execution — scope disputes, payment issues, change order disagreements, quality non-conformances — and know how to address each before it escalates into a formal dispute
- Use Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) to improve the efficiency and strategic effectiveness of the procurement and contracting process over the full life of the contract
Your Instructor
Emmanuel Udo
MSc, PMP, CMC, FIMP
Emmanuel has worked on EPC projects in the oil & gas sector, including roles involving contract oversight, scope management, and contractor performance management. The case studies and examples in this course are drawn from real EPC environments — providing the contextual depth that generic procurement courses cannot offer.
Enrol Today
Stop managing EPC contracts by instinct. Start managing them with intelligence.
- Full 20-hour course across 5 structured days | Certificate of Completion
- The only course that addresses EPC contracts specifically from the owner's perspective
- From contracting strategy to dispute resolution — the complete owner's toolkit
- Enrol now and start immediately
Course Price: USD 297 (NGN 297,000)
Enrol Now