Specialist Certificate · Bachelor's level · CPS-14

Specifications, Tenders and Costing

For: Project managers, staff of public procurement units, IT managers and staff of digital services companies who draft, cost or respond to IT calls for tenders.

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Organisation over 20 weeks

Four 5-week blocks (4 weeks of classes, 1 week of assessment). The two course units are taken unchanged from the original degree: same content, same assessments.

Blocks 1 and 2 (weeks 1 to 10): CDC 241 — Specifications and Calls for Tenders
Blocks 3 and 4 (weeks 11 to 20): EST 242 — Estimating, Budgeting and Financial Control

CDC 241 - Specifications and Calls for Tenders

Master both sides of contracting: drafting a requirements specification on the client side and building a response to a call for tenders on the supplier side, including in public procurement.

Learning outcomes

Translate the statement of needs into a functional and technical requirements specification.
Analyse a tender dossier and extract requirements, criteria and risks from it.
Build a reasoned technical and financial bid.
Identify the essential clauses of an IT services contract.

Content

Requirements specification: context, objectives, scope, requirements, constraints, deliverables, acceptance criteria, schedule.
Public procurement: general principles of public procurement and procedures, studied on the national and community (WAEMU) regulations in force; tender dossier, evaluation of bids.
Responding to a call for tenders: bid/no-bid decision, technical proposal, financial offer, references, consortium.
IT contracts: fixed price and time and materials, obligation of result or of means, penalties, warranties, ownership of developments, reversibility.
Electronic documents and signatures: loi n°2008-08 du 25 janvier 2008 (Electronic Transactions Act) (provisions studied from the text); the dematerialisation of award procedures falls under public procurement regulations.
Calls for tenders from donors and international organisations, under their own procurement rules.

Assessment: Project (60%): complete requirements specification for a real organisation. Continuous assessment (40%): response to a simulated call for tenders (25%) and annotated analysis of a contract (15%).

EST 242 - Estimating, Budgeting and Financial Control

Give the project manager the ability to cost a project in a defensible way, then keep to its budget.

Learning outcomes

Estimate the workload of an IT project using several methods and justify the result.
Build the full budget of a project in FCFA (CFA francs).
Implement financial control tools and keep them up to date.
Analyse variances between planned and actual figures and propose corrective measures.

Content

Estimation methods: analogous, parametric, three-point, function point, relative estimation in an agile team.
From needs to costing: breakdown, work units, effort in person-days, daily rates.
Budget: human resources, equipment, licences, hosting, training, contingency reserve; total cost of ownership.
Monitoring: commitments, actual spend, estimate to complete; calculation of earned value and of the cost and schedule performance indices, whose principle was covered in PRJ 231.
Trade-offs: make or buy, investment or subscription, open-source or proprietary software.

Assessment: Continuous assessment (40%): estimation exercises using several methods, with justification of the result selected. Final examination (60%): costing, budget and variance analysis of a project in a case study, using earned value indices.

Career opportunities

IT project manager, bid response officer, project costing and budget monitoring officer.

At your own pace: the self-paced pathway

In a class, this certificate takes 20 weeks, on the cohort's dates. On the self-paced pathway, you start whenever you like, online, and progress at your own pace. The price is the same.

Estimate how long my pathway will take

12 h / week · 240 hours in total

Duration: about 20 weeks
Estimated end: 20 weeks after you start
Examination: Online, subject to available slots, no earlier than 20 weeks after you start
Payment: In 1 to 5 monthly instalments, as you choose

An indicative estimate, for a start today and 240 hours of work. You can change your pace along the way; the pathway must be completed within 60 weeks (about 14 months) of your start. Your e-Campus access opens with your first payment.

Admission

Baccalauréat and experience of IT projects or public procurement assessed on application, or second year of a Bachelor's degree in a compatible field. Admission based on application; detailed requirements set by the school.

The credits you earn are recognised without further assessment if you later join the programme they come from, Professional Bachelor's degree in IT Project Management, within a period set by the certificate regulations.