Contract salvage planning for vehicle software, embedded controls, procurement, supplier review, and project risk.
We have extensive experience tendering for and delivering electric vehicle projects. We often see competitors underquote, sometimes through inexperience and sometimes, in our view, to secure long-running work packages they may not have the skills or experience to deliver successfully.
If you are stuck in a long-running vehicle software development contract, you are not alone.
More than half of Cuedo Controls’ successful contracts have involved recovering projects from other providers after delivery had fallen behind schedule, exceeded budget, or failed to meet expectations. In some cases, these projects had already overrun by several hundred percent in both time and cost.
There are a few important facets to contract salvage:
First, determine whether the supplier already has the skills to deliver the project, or whether you are effectively paying them to develop those capabilities as they go. There can be a significant difference in time, cost, and quality between organisations that are executing known engineering processes and organisations that are inventing those processes during delivery.
If the original time and cost estimates have proven inaccurate, treat any revised estimates carefully. Ask whether the supplier has the experience to understand the remaining work, estimate it accurately, and break it into manageable parts. In software projects, accurate estimation requires Software Architecture Design documents before development begins. Without them, the estimate is unlikely to reflect the true scope of the work.
In these situations, Cuedo Controls can provide an independent technical review. This does not need to be disclosed to the contractor. With access to the project source code and project plan, we can assess the contractor’s technical capability, provide a realistic estimate of the remaining time and cost to completion, and explain the basis for our findings. You can then raise those points with the contractor and compare their response against our independent view.
Second, assess whether you are satisfied with the quality of work being delivered under the contract. Some contractors explain delays by saying they are investing extra time to produce higher-quality software in the long term. In some cases, this may be true.
However, quality software is usually well-architected and can be tested in small, isolated components. If a contractor claims they need more time to improve quality while the vehicle still does not run, ask him whether smaller parts of the software can be tested independently.
If this is not possible, the claim of quality becomes difficult to verify. Without visible evidence of progress, especially evidence that completed parts of the software work robustly and as intended, you may simply be relying on the contractor’s word. In some cases, the contractor may not have enough experience to recognise the difference between working software and quality software.
Finally, if you want to turn the project around, you need to understand your legal position. Cuedo Controls have experienced legal and accounting expertise on its Board of Directors. Our lawyers have handled some of the country’s highest-profile mediation cases. We can discreetly review your development contract and help you to understand your options.
There may be lawful pathways to terminate or restructure a contract. For example, some jurisdictions require engineers to be registered under the correct discipline before delivering control software. If a provider is not properly registered, they may not be legally permitted to perform that work. We review each contract and delivery arrangement from multiple angles to identify practical options.
In summary, we help decision-makers to:
If you come to us with the intention of transferring the project, we will do everything we reasonably can to help you exit the existing arrangement cleanly and cost-effectively. In many cases, where we have the opportunity to tender for post-exit recovery work, we are happy to provide contract review at no cost.