CSI Academy · Practitioner Course
Procurement & Contracting for OPA
Contract strategy, RFP development, vendor evaluation, and the commercial terms that protect a twenty-five year investment. Where openness is won or lost.
Curriculum
15 lessons across three parts
Part 1 — The Specification Foundation
Buying an Architecture, Not a Platform
Contract strategy, RFP development, and vendor evaluation for OPA.
- The traditional DCS purchase
- The buyer's new responsibilities
- Course roadmap
The OPA Procurement Lifecycle
A defined sequence: philosophy, requirements, RFP, evaluation, award.
- Stage ownership
- The evaluation and award stages
- The document chain
Writing the Control Philosophy
What the plant needs its automation to do, and why.
- Operating intent and availability
- Operator and alarm philosophy
- Keeping it short and making it govern
Requirements Development
Requirements: statements a bid can be measured against.
- Working with profiles
- Writing requirements that can be evaluated
- Requirements complete, conformance next
O-PAS Conformance in Contract Language
Conformance must be a contractual obligation, not a brochure echo.
- The anatomy of a binding conformance clause
- Remedies: what happens when conformance fails
- Verification is the other half
Certificates Versus Claims
A claim is a sentence; a certificate is a verifiable record.
- Reading the register properly
- Pricing the gap
- From verified components to a structured RFP
Part 2 — Running the Procurement
RFP Structure for OPA Scope
How you divide the scope decides how bids compare.
- Typical OPA package boundaries
- Information bidders need to bid well
- Bids arrive: now judge them
Vendor Evaluation Frameworks
Evaluation converts bids into a defensible decision.
- Disqualifiers first
- Commercial evaluation and lifecycle cost
- The evaluation record and the short list
Bid Tabulation Under Open Architecture
Tabulation lays bids side by side in one structure.
- The technical tabulation
- Normalisation judgements and their limits
- The tabulation as decision instrument
The Integrator and MAC Role
Single-vendor delivery bundled integration invisibly.
- How the MAC role changes under OPA
- Contracting the integration scope
- The accountability map
Commercial Risk Allocation
Risk to the party best able to control it.
- Mapping the risks worth allocating
- The multi-vendor seams
- From risk to the long tail
Warranty, Support, and Lifecycle Terms
The contract's long tail outlives everyone who negotiated it.
- Warranty that means something
- Spares, obsolescence, and last-buy rights
- The lifecycle term sheet
Part 3 — Closing and Protecting the Deal
Negotiation
Negotiation narrows terms with finalists, on your structure.
- Know your holds before the room
- Concessions that cost you in year eight
- The terms that keep the future open
Contracting for Portability
Portability: changing suppliers without rebuilding the system.
- Licensing that travels
- Terms for the transition itself
- The open option, held
Case Study and Capstone Red-Line
A composite procurement walked end to end.
- The case: a specialty chemicals expansion
- What negotiation defended
- Your capstone red-line
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Also included with CSI EPC Practitioner certification enrollment.
Questions? trevor@csi-automation.com
Procurement & Contracting for OPA
Format
Self-paced video lessons
Duration
15 lessons · approximately 2 hours
Level
Practitioner — assumes DCS engineering background
Capstone
Red-line a deliberately flawed requisition and bid tabulation
Questions
trevor@csi-automation.com
O-PAS Fundamentals
New to OPA? Start with the foundation course covering the standard, architecture, and core concepts.
O-PAS Fundamentals →CSI Academy
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