Canadian Lawyer InHouse

33 CANADIANLAWYERMAG.COM/INHOUSE SEPTEMBER 2017 A ndrew Mayer joined the Port of Prince Rupert in 2008 as a director and was vice president, commercial and regulatory affairs and general counsel until he was ap- pointed to the bench of the Supreme Court of British Columbia in April. As a member of the executive team, May- er provided legal and strategic business ad- vice to the executive team, the CEO and the board of directors. He oversaw regulatory matters affecting port operations and led commercial nego- tiations in respect to new developments and terminal expansion projects. He was also responsible for the negotiation and imple- mentation of settlement agreements with the local First Nations. Mayer managed a team of two in-house counsel and two sup- port staff as well. Realizing that the organization didn't have any central repository for all of its contracts — various departments were managing them, so there was no easy way to track them — Mayer purchased software from Legal Suite to store and manage all PRPA contracts. From there, he worked with his team to develop a contract compliance program. "When I started working at PRPA with Andrew, he had recently purchased Legal Suite, which once populated would act as a central repository where all the PRPA con- tracts could be kept and important dates such as lease terms, rent reviews, expiration dates, reporting obligation dates, etc. could be diarized and our department would re- ceive alarms so we could ensure nothing was missed," says Shelby O'Brien, director, commercial and regulatory affairs with the PRPA. "The software also allows us to con- duct reports, so, for example, we can easily see how many current confi dentiality agree- ments are in place. We have since populated Legal Suite with nearly 500 contracts." As the team's knowledge of Legal Suite developed and the PRPA continued to grow, Mayer recognized a need for a more fulsome contract compliance program that would not only pay attention to date specifi c compliance issues but could also track other compliance matters. Last year, he tasked O'Brien and Karen Choy to meet with all of the departments and review contracts to consider how they could improve contract compliance. "In this case, contract compliance refers to ensuring that both PRPA and the other contracting party are meeting their obliga- tions throughout the life of the contract," says O'Brien. "For example, if we have a contract where there are obligations on a tenant to conduct regular environmental tests and provide PRPA with the results, that would be a compliance issue we would want to be able to track in our new contract compliance program," she says. Another example would be if the PRPA had an obligation to provide certain infor- mation to the other party. "It may be the re- sponsibility of another department to pro- vide that information and we would want to be able to confi rm that it was completed as required under the contract," O'Brien adds. The program is still in its early days as the department spent most of last year research- ing and coming up with recommendations. "This year, we are beginning to im- plement those recommendations," says O'Brien. "Our recommendations included some changes in how we use Legal Suite and in particular how information is inputted to ensure consistency and accuracy." The department is also providing more information to the management team on newly executed contracts that include infor- mation on compliance items for which each department would be responsible. "We are then able to follow up with each department and record the information re- lating to these compliance issues in Legal Suite so we will have a running history of the contract," she says. IH Ensuring contract compliance at Prince Rupert Port Authority By Jennifer Brown Category: Law Department Leadership Department size: Small, public sector Company: Port of Prince Rupert Top left: Karen Choy and Shelby O'Brien, in-house counsel. Andrew Mayer, former GC, now judge with Supreme Court of B.C.

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