AC-03 · our practice ref · our-reading

Agree the technical content of the contract

Practice AC-03 in the Acquisition Management group. The basis is our-reading, and the row asks for 3 pieces of evidence.

At a glance

Ref: AC-03
Process: Acquisition Management
Basis: our-reading
Source: Public abstract, process list
Evidence: 3 items
Gaps: 2 common

Evidence to keep

Acquisition ManagementThe contract with the technical annexes
Acquisition ManagementThe acceptance criteria and the evidence list
Acquisition ManagementThe change and escalation route

Questions before you sign

What exactly is the supplier contracted to deliver?
How will we accept it, and on what evidence?
Who resolves a technical dispute?

The practice, in our words

Put the technical content in the agreement: the specification, the acceptance criteria, the evidence to be delivered, the interface responsibilities, the change route and the schedule. A commercial contract without the technical content leaves the VSE unable to accept or reject the work.

What it means in a VSE

Attach the specification and the acceptance test to the contract and reference them. Say who provides which evidence and when. If the supplier will not agree to an acceptance test, that is a finding before the contract, not after.

In a firm of 25 people or fewer, agree the technical content of the contract has to earn its time. The test for AC-03 is not whether the team understands it but whether the artefact exists at the end of the project. Shrink the meeting. Shrink the document. Keep the record.

How to evidence it

Attach the artefacts above to the Agree the technical content of the contract row with the project name, the owner and the date. The anchor for AC-03 is The contract with the technical annexes. A named person must produce it on request.

For AC-03, the reviewer will sample one live decision and ask for The acceptance criteria and the evidence list. No artefact, no evidence. A file that depends on one person's mailbox is not a file for agree the technical content of the contract.

What an assessor samples

An assessor reads the agree the technical content of the contract practice, asks for its evidence and tests one project against it. For AC-03, the useful sample is the most recent project that used the practice, not the best one. A reconstruction written for the visit is a finding for AC-03 if the practice cannot be shown to have happened when it mattered.

Common gaps

A purchase order with no specification
Acceptance criteria that test the supplier's process rather than the delivered element

What changes from the 2019 report. For AC-03, acquisition management is named in the public abstract. The transition work is to put the technical content and the acceptance evidence into the purchase, not only the price.

Where the draft fits

The public abstract places agree the technical content of the contract inside one of the four processes the Intermediate profile covers. For AC-03, the draft clause numbering and wording are not public, so this page cites Public abstract, process list and does not quote the draft. The basis label for AC-03 says whether the practice is stated in the public record, named as a process in the series, or our reading.

Related practices

Source for this page: Public abstract, process list. Open the record and compare it with the AC-03 statement above. Retrieved 2026-10-22.