2 - Delivery and Milestone Management
Overview
This section takes you through how to manage your contract once your proposal has been approved by the community.
Contract Management Process
Smart Contract Administration Dashboard
To assist the use of smart contracts, an administration dashboard is available. It will be accessible to vendors via the credentials provided by the vendor in the legal contract.
Delivery Assurance will complete a visual check to ensure you can login and interact with your smart contract instance.
This will allow you - the vendor, to complete the following actions:
Sign a contract
Sign a contract change
Attach your Milestone Acceptance Forms (MAF)
Withdraw milestone payments on chain
View your project details, milestone details and progress
Documentation on the administration tooling is available here.
Milestone Completion Process
Once you have completed a milestone, ensure you have delivered what was agreed within the legal contract.
You are required to submit a MAF explaining what you did and how you achieved your milestone, in line with the acceptance criteria in your legal contract.
Prepare your milestone evidence using the MAF template, as outlined in the Delivery Assurance Best Practice Policy.
Share a copy of the MAF with Delivery Assurance once it has been reviewed by the TPA, or at the same time, via Slack or another agreed communication channel.
Delivery Assurance will provide feedback, which should be addressed prior to finalization.
Once feedback has been implemented and Delivery Assurance is satisfied, seek formal signature from the TPA.
Upload the final MAF (with TPA signature) as metadata to the milestone through the administration dashboard, prior to or on the milestone delivery date.
Sign the MAF via the dashboard; Delivery Assurance will then complete the final signature.
There may be an additional milestone requirement to make any Third Party Assurer assessment documentation public.
Download Milestone Acceptance Form
Review & Outcome
Delivery Assurance will review the MAF to ensure it has been completed and uploaded correctly. We will review it against a standard checklist to ensure the MAF:
Includes all required fields and links to supporting documents, with all links accessible,
Contains deliverables that are complete and aligned with the descriptions outlined in the SoW,
Clearly demonstrates how each acceptance criterion has been satisfied,
Provides evidence that is clear, credible, and verifiable.
All submitted evidence is transparent to the community. If there is something sensitive to share, please contact your Delivery Assurance representative.
If evidence is sufficient, the payment will become available to withdraw as per the milestone payment date.
If evidence is not supplied or is deemed insufficient, Delivery Assurance will work with you to rectify the issue; if unresolved, the milestone may be paused (subject to Intersect senior approval), with rationale provided.
If a milestone is paused, once sufficient evidence is provided and uploaded, payment can be resumed and the milestone will be available to withdraw.
Here is an example of a Good MAF.
You are required to follow this process to ensure consistency across all vendors and projects and also help the community understand the value you have delivered.
Invoice Submission
Many organisations will still require invoices for legal and traditional financial bookkeeping, including the CDH.
Vendors must submit invoices for every milestone, via the smart contract dashboard.
Invoices must be submitted in accordance with the details provided in the appendix (link to be updated), as invoices are processed automatically. Failure to submit correctly may result in the invoice being automatically rejected.
The invoice should be submitted within 5 working days of the milestone completion date to avoid payment date delays.
If you have not met the quality and upload criteria of the milestone and MAF metadata, and the invoice submission - your payment will be paused until these have been rectified.
Payment
Each written contract specifies a milestone completion date and a payment date. This payment date is usually 30 days following the milestone completion date. This allows a circa 30 day period to review and approve milestone evidence, much like how traditional contracts have payment terms.
Whilst Intersect does not want to unduly deny or delay funding to vendors it is important that sufficient time is taken to review evidence and if necessary, solicit community feedback prior to the payment date.
As a safeguard towards vendors, the smart contract framework operates as ‘fail-open’, this means that should Intersect or its oversight fail in any way, vendor payments will never be automatically blocked.
Milestone Spot Check Reviews
To further strengthen the integrity of our Administration function, Intersect is adding to it's milestone review process to include a layer of technical validation known as "Milestone Spot-Check Reviews".
As Intersect's Administration offering grows, we are introducing a dedicated technical layer to our review process to complement our administrative oversight. While Intersect continues to manage the administrative oversight of Treasury-funded project milestones, we will now engage trusted community reviewers to provide independent technical assurance. This ensures that project deliverables are meeting high technical standards, while providing an objective review to support successful project outcomes.
How are milestones selected for review?
Not every milestone is required to be reviewed. Selection could be based on:
Significance: High-impact or high-value deliverables.
Community Interest: Items of particular importance, or dependencies within the ecosystem.
Internal Selection: Standardized "spot checks" at chosen milestones in vendor contracts, to maintain baseline quality.
How will this change affect current vendors?
We have designed this process to ensure the highest project delivery standards across the ecosystem without disrupting active vendors:
No delays to approval or payment: These additional review checks will be conducted within the agreed delivery and payment dates of administration contracts.
No extra documentation required: All information required should be readily submitted and available in the normal MAF submissions.
Continuous quality is expected: Depending on the nature and reason for the additional review, you may not be notified until after its completion. Any milestone could be selected for an additional review, so vendors should attest and submit quality milestones at all times.
Direct issue resolution: If the reviewer identifies an issue, Intersect's administration team will notify the vendor should any issues or irregularities need to be addressed, and the terms and conditions under which these must be addressed.
Third Party Assurers (TPAs) are still needed: This change does not replace the need for vendors to provide their own Third Party Assurance or community feedback. TPAs provide valuable insight and knowledge sharing across the ecosystem.
Where can the community find the outcomes of the milestone reviews?
Review feedback will be shared with the Vendor and where appropriate the wider community. This feedback will be provided directly by Intersect, not via a reviewer or other intermediary, which is Intersect's duty as an administrator.
To protect against undue recourse of a reviewer, specific reviewers for specific milestones will remain anonymous where possible. However, Intersect will publish a list of the reviewers it has contractual agreements with. Additionally, periodic reporting will be provided to Intersect's independent oversight committee as evidence against conflict of interests between reviewers and vendors.
Public Demonstrations
As part of your commitment to the community, you may be required to deliver a public demonstration showcasing the progress of your work. For example, this could involve presenting your project at an Intersect Town Hall. Where applicable, this requirement will be defined within your contract as a formal milestone.
Go to Step 3 – Smart Contract Actions & Contract Completion
Move to the final stage of the process to understand how smart contract actions work and what to expect as your project reaches completion.
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