Digital contract drafting and management is an emerging area with the power to transform facilities management. Here Rekha Thawrani OBE, Global Director at NEC Contracts, explains what a true digital solution looks like and the advantages it can bring to FM teams.
FM contracts are complex, long-term service agreements. They run across multiple years, involve a wide range of partners and stakeholders, and need flexibility built in to accommodate the degree of change that inevitably occurs over a contract period. Traditional forms of contract struggle with all three.
Technology is starting to help. NEC Contracts research published in 2025, Transforming Construction: Smarter, greener, together, found that 40% of organisations have a clear digital roadmap, which they are implementing, and 26% consider digital transformation core to their business. In the facilities management sector, 58% said they use technology to support contract drafting and management.
But there is an important distinction between using technology and working digitally. A PDF of a printed contract, shared and amended through third-party software, is a semi-digital approach. The document has moved onto a screen, but the process behind it has not changed. That is why contract management still remains largely paper-based in practice, and why the opportunity for FM teams is greater than the adoption figures suggest.
Enhancing quality, collaboration and compliance
So, what does a genuinely digital solution look like? It should offer a single, structured environment where contracts are collectively developed and reviewed, with full version integrity and permission controls. Service providers can propose changes to the scope, with the resulting price adjustment visible to all parties. The client can then accept, refuse or ask for a quote, all within the same platform.
Drafting is also faster, and errors surface during the drafting process rather than at execution stage, where they become both problematic and costly. When quality is built in from the start, it improves the result.
The contract matters as much as the platform
For FM teams, the form of contract is as important as the technology it sits in. For example, the NEC4 Facilities Management Contract (FMC) was developed specifically for the facilities management sector and for organisations with assets to maintain. Work is ordered through Service Orders and Project Orders, which provides the flexibility long-term agreements need. The Performance Table sets out performance targets and how the service provider can meet, exceed or fail to meet them, incentivising over-delivery rather than simply penalising failure. Early warning procedures ask service providers to raise potential problems before they become serious, prioritising solutions early and affecting both quality of delivery and compliance directly.
Delivering those mechanisms digitally is what turns them from clauses into working practice. NEC Contracts has long set the standard for collaborative contracting, and the subscription-based NEC Digital makes that approach more accessible. Interactive contextual guidance and a side-by-side clause navigator, giving a live view of selected options and relevant clauses, support teams with differing levels of contract experience and help apply the NEC Contracts collaborative framework consistently, at scale and across programmes of varying complexity.
Empower teams with knowledge
Facilities management sits across people, processes and places, and digital contracting supports all three. Getting full value from it depends on knowledge. NEC Training offers an introductory course on the NEC4 FMC for those new to the form, and the NEC4 FMC Service Manager Accreditation for experienced practitioners, a specialist certification pathway for those performing the Service Manager role. Together they equip FM professionals with the skills to use digital contracting effectively and to establish the collaborative behaviours that make it work.
www.neccontract.com/digital
