What Does A Contract Manager Do?

WHAT DOES A CONTRACT MANAGER DO?

Overview Job Description Resume Cover Letter Skills Roles

Published: September 24, 2024 - The Contract Manager develops and maintains relationships with all stakeholders including contractors, vendors, and customers, while ensuring all projects adhere to set standards and contractual agreements. This role involves regular site visits to monitor project progress and compliance, coordinate resources, and oversee site managers and subcontractors, ensuring high standards of work and effective resource management. Additionally, the Contract Manager provides contractual guidance and administrative support across projects, fostering a customer-focused culture through effective communication, stakeholder management, and strategic service delivery planning.

A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Contract Manager

1. Contract Manager Duties

Team Management: Management of engineers/administration team across a large demanding site.
Performance Monitoring: Ensure contractually agreed KPIs/SLAs are met.
Client Relationship Management: Ensure client satisfaction levels are consistently high, leading to contract development and increased responsibilities.
Reporting and Analysis: Produce weekly/monthly reports detailing contractual performance, identifying budget variations, and measures to bridge gaps.
Meeting Participation: Attend strategic contractual/operational meetings with the client weekly.
Work Order Management: Ensure successful completion of all reactive and PPM work orders, meeting KPIs and SLAs.
Health & Safety Compliance: Ensure necessary Health and Safety compliance across all contracts in line with Smart Managed Solutions and client policies, meeting statutory and company reporting procedures.
Subcontractor Management: Ensure subcontractors perform at high levels, with regular performance reviews and meetings with subcontractor managers.
Project Execution: Ensure extra works are identified, quoted, and executed in a timely manner.
Process Adherence: Ensure company processes and systems are deployed and used correctly on site.
Leadership and Support: Provide leadership, guidance, advice, coaching, and direct support to deliver the highest standard of service, including best practice, selection, training, assessment, and recognition/reward.
Resource Management: Ensure Smart Managed Solutions staffing levels for contracts, balancing cost reduction with service excellence.
Operational Flexibility: Ensure structures support peaks and troughs in workload and disaster recovery.
Customer Focus: Ensure a customer focus within all operational activities, maintaining effective relationships with key client contacts (inclusive of client entertainment).

2. Contract Manager Details

Financial Management: Ensure financial targets set are achieved and, when possible, exceeded.
Resource Optimization: Manage the resources of the contracts to maximize profitability, legal compliance, and safety performance in line with customer expectations.
Budget Preparation: Provide statistical information for budget preparation.
Revenue Enhancement: Maintain current budgeted revenue and identify opportunities to increase revenue to enhance growth and increase the organization's profile.
KPI Management: Ensure KPIs are managed, and operational performance of RDF, Transfer Stations, and HWRCs are within remit.
Financial Reporting: Do monthly reporting to the General Manager, reporting financial variances.
Compliance Management: Manage the compliance of permitted facilities, ensuring full environmental performance.
Stakeholder Relationship Management: Create and maintain a strong and professional relationship with all council officers to meet contractual commitments, fostering a partnership approach.
Business Development: Involve in business development with bids for new business and re-bids.
Employee Development: Consider and plan the development and succession of employees.
Safety Promotion: Promote a healthy and safe working environment and a continuous improvement culture.
Market Analysis: Review historic sales data, understand trends, and identify opportunities to introduce new products and services or substitute products that are technically and commercially feasible.
Sales Strategy Development: Review contract sales and margins, developing strategies to minimize risk and maximize profitability.
Database Management: Update and maintain databases, producing information regarding the sales pipeline, forecasting, and analysis to meet business requirements.

3. Contract Manager Responsibilities

Contract Drafting and Negotiation: Collaborate with business functions to draft and negotiate a wide variety of complex contracts, including master service agreements, standalone agreements, work orders, change orders, amendments, distribution, manufacturing, and supply agreements.
Template Management: Manage the contract template process, including systematic reviews of templates and playbooks, and incorporate best contracting practices and provisions.
Inquiry Response: Respond to complex inquiries regarding contract obligations and revisions.
Stakeholder Communication: Communicate and present information to stakeholders about all contract-related matters.
Risk Management: Identify risks and issues, suggesting alternatives that lead to the best solution.
Process Improvement: Develop and implement improvements to the contracting process and ongoing compliance.
Lifecycle Monitoring: Monitor agreements throughout the contract life cycle for price increases, product launches, appropriate approvals, expirations, etc.
Internal Advisory: Advise internal teams on company processes, contract status, and make recommendations based on company policies and standards.
Legal Compliance: Work with legal attorneys, compliance, and other business functions to ensure templates comply with legal requirements and best practices.
Content Creation: Write, edit, and proofread content (including during the RFP submission phase).
Feedback Analysis: Receive feedback from different functions, analyze requests for changes or updates, and decide with pursuit teams and other stakeholders on the appropriate course of action.
Legal Coordination: Maintain relationships with legal counsels in markets and adapt the content of the GSOW to the latest local requirements.
Alignment Checking: Constantly check with stakeholders (finance, ops, etc.) to ensure the terms of GSOWs are aligned with customer capabilities, processes, and compliance regulations.
Service GSOW Development: Develop a service-only GSOW in collaboration with pursuit teams.
NSI Collaboration: Work with NSI teams to ensure the service description results from the NSI process.

4. Contract Manager Job Summary

Content Adaptation: Adapt the NSI service description to transition from marketing content to content suitable for inclusion in a legal document.
Translation Oversight: Work with proposal managers in the region to ensure proper translation of the GSOW or SSOW.
Deal Support: Provide direct deal support for the procurement and supply chain management process, advising on technology and outsourcing deals.
Negotiation Support: Provide advice and negotiation support for a broad range of procurement commercial transactions, including drafting and negotiating commercial agreements, contract interpretation, account counseling, and supporting governance processes.
Contract Understanding: Understand supplier contracts currently in place and support stakeholders in retrieving relevant contract details.
Negotiation Strategy Development: Collaborate with business stakeholders to develop negotiation strategies and lead supplier negotiations.
Compliance Assurance: Ensure business activities and contracts comply with internal policies, guidelines, industry laws, and regulations.
Complex Procurement Support: Provide support for complex procurement activities, including contract interpretation, document drafting, meeting facilitation, drafting key communications, and issue resolution.
Dispute Support: Provide support and advice regarding disputes between an account and a customer or third party that are not handled by internal account support teams.
Product Knowledge Development: Develop and maintain a high level of product knowledge in line with the company's product development portfolio.
Performance Management: Manage performance and recognize outstanding efforts.
Career Development: Help develop direct reports' career paths through mentorship and coaching.
Change Leadership: Lead change initiatives and drive continuous improvement.
Resource Management: Establish priorities and proactively assign resources.
Performance Barrier Removal: Remove performance barriers.

5. Contract Manager Accountabilities

Contractor Reporting: Provide contractor status reports detailing current progress, risks, and issues.
Stakeholder Presentation: Present reports and necessary data to internal key stakeholders, including the OC Board and West Midlands Police and Home Office.
Relationship Building: Develop and build strong relationships with contractors, supporting them in creating effective recruitment and scheduling plans that account for attrition and provide a robust contingency plan.
Project Planning: Create a detailed project plan to manage the contract from onboarding, planning, readiness, games time delivery, to evaluation, ensuring timely and budget-compliant delivery with achieved service levels.
Performance Management: Conduct ongoing performance management of all OC private contract security contractors, ensuring performance reviews and implementation of improvement plans or service credits are documented.
Policy Development: Develop SEC and venue-based policies and procedures, as well as operational documentation and reporting.
Games Time Role: Take on the unique opportunity of a games time role.
Core Values Promotion: Promote and support the core values of Smart Managed Solutions.
Financial Management: Manage all financial reports to achieve planned targets.
Incident Management: Ensure continuity of updates and management of incidents.
Customer Ownership: Own one or more customers from every angle, acting as the single point of contact for discussing and establishing process improvements.
Cross-Department Collaboration: Work as an internal bridge between Operations and Product departments to develop customized solutions.
Business Development Liaison: Maintain close contact with Business Development regarding commercial opportunities to extend customer relationships.
Workflow Monitoring: Monitor operational workflows from booking to settlement.

6. Contract Manager Functions

Milestone Monitoring: Develop processes to monitor key milestones within the contract lifecycle, including renewals, terminations, and key deliverables.
Contract Compliance Oversight: Oversee ongoing adherence to contractual terms, both financial and non-financial, ensuring action is taken if non-compliance is identified.
RACI and DOA Adherence: Develop processes and procedures to ensure internal RACI and DOA agreements are followed within lifecycle management.
Contractual Obligation Fulfillment: Ensure Superdry is fulfilling its contractual obligations.
Decision Support: Support decision-making on contract extensions and terminations by coordinating supporting materials across functions.
Governance Development: Develop governance to ensure timelines are met by key stakeholders to hit renewal deadlines, including regular reporting of upcoming renewals.
Legal Collaboration: Work with the legal team to support the implementation, embedding, and ongoing development of the franchise contract automation system.
Discrepancy Reconciliation: Work with relevant stakeholders to reconcile discrepancies between terms in systems and those within contracts, including data cleansing exercises.
Non-Compliance Resolution: Collaborate with internal functions to resolve non-compliance issues, such as ensuring royalties and interests are correctly invoiced and marketing spend is managed.
Contractual Information Management: Ensure systems are kept up-to-date with the latest contractual information.
Documentation Organization: Locate documentation related to contracts for different wholesale accounts and store it in a central repository.
Spreadsheet Review: Review existing Excel spreadsheets containing contractual information held by internal functions.
Project Assistance: Assist the Senior Business Development Analyst with ad-hoc projects.

7. Contract Manager Job Description

Contract Implementation: Articulate, capture, and implement contractual obligations or issues.
Contract Negotiation: Negotiate contract terms with both internal and external entities.
Contract Review: Review existing contracts and update them as needed.
Performance Monitoring: Monitor contractual performance using spreadsheets and electronic document management systems.
Risk Analysis: Analyze risks associated with specific contract terms.
Language Standardization: Create language standards for new or existing contract documents.
Reporting: Provide detailed reporting to involved parties during the contract duration.
Contract Management: Manage multiple contracts simultaneously.
Information Delivery: Deliver relevant information about the contract across multiple departments.
Data Extraction: Use specialist tools to extract the necessary data.
Query Response: Respond to data-related queries and keep track of them.
Trend Analysis: Analyze data to identify trends.
Process Improvement: Set up processes and systems to make working with data more efficient.
Data Research: Research new ways to utilize data.
Report Production: Produce reports and charts communicating trends within data to non-specialists.
Presentation Skills: Present information generated from data to clients and managers.

8. Contract Manager Overview

Tender Support: Support National Key Account Managers (NKAM) in preparing tender submissions, ensuring they are commercially sound and align with Rexel’s strategies and policies.
Bid Advisory: Support bid teams on new business opportunities, including reviews of commercial and legal documents, pricing and margin analysis, and general commercial and contractual advice.
Bid Preparation: Assist in bid preparation, including pre-qualification questionnaires and NDAs.
Risk Assessment: Review commercial aspects of the RFT and advise on commercial risks to NKAM.
Legal Review: Review and respond to legal aspects of the RFT in collaboration with General Counsel.
Expert Collaboration: Work with subject matter experts on RFT question responses.
Insurance Review: Review insurance requirements in association with the Company Secretary.
Pricing Coordination: Work with the pricing team to deliver timely priced bills of material (BoMs).
Contract Review Management: Manage the contract review process and facilitate inputs from key stakeholders, including the key account manager, pricing, legal, finance, insurance, HR, quality assurance, and safety.
Issue Resolution: Provide advice on and manage the resolution of commercial and contractual issues related to customer contracts, including terms, conditions, and variations.
Procurement Support: Support procurement in reviewing, drafting, and negotiating contracts with suppliers and subcontractors.
Customer Meetings: Participate in meetings with customers to resolve contractual issues and disputes.
Contract Handover: Facilitate the handover of new contracts to the Contracts Operations Manager.
Process Improvement: Lead process improvement initiatives with internal stakeholders aimed at delivering improved efficiencies in customer contracts.
Intelligence Database Management: Own the customer and competitor intelligence database, ensuring appropriate intelligence is contributed by the NKAM team.

9. Contract Manager Details and Accountabilities

Contract Performance Reporting: Report to clients on overall contract performance, including KPIs and finances.
Team Coordination: Coordinate delivery teams.
Client Reporting Coordination: Coordinate all client reporting from delivery, finance, client account, credit control, and H&S.
Client Meetings Maintenance: Maintain regular client meetings as agreed per contract.
Process Review: Conduct LEAN reviews of processes.
Continuous Improvement: Ensure continuous improvement initiatives.
Issue Identification: Identify firm-wide contract issues to report back to the Head of Contract Management.
Team Reporting: Report on a weekly/monthly basis during team meetings.
Client Relationship Management: Develop and maintain strong relationships with clients to ensure smooth contract delivery.
Comprehensive Reporting: Manage and deliver monthly, quarterly, and yearly reporting.
Event Coordination: Arrange events related to the contracts, including team building, health and safety, and CPD.
Contract Demobilization Assistance: Assist with contract demobilization.
Customer Feedback Sessions: Conduct regular customer feedback and alignment sessions.
Stakeholder Communication: Transfer customer needs and problems to internal stakeholders (Operations, Product, Accounting, Sales).
KPI Monitoring: Constantly monitor KPI figures of customer transports to identify improvement potentials and initiate key actions.

10. Contract Manager Tasks

Service Management: Responsible for all day-to-day aspects relating to the management and maintenance of the property cleaning service within the contract specification and agreed performance targets.
Contract Knowledge: Maintain a full understanding and working knowledge of the contract.
Work Allocation: Responsible for work allocation to the cleaning team, adhering to contract specifications, financial budget, and working principles.
Staff Management: Plan staff rotas and manage staff hours worked, including sickness and annual leave.
Hygiene Standards Compliance: Ensure a high standard of personal hygiene, appearance, and general cleanliness of all staff, complying with statutory and company regulations.
Material Management: Manage cleaning materials, ensuring stock rotation and safety in storage.
Performance Auditing: Conduct weekly cleaning audits to monitor performance and ensure company and client standards are met.
Training Coordination: Liaise with cleaning operatives, supervisors, and managers to deliver necessary training and maintain records accordingly.
Health and Safety Compliance: Comply with all company and client policies and statutory regulations related to health and safety, hygiene, cleanliness, fire safety, and COSHH.
Meeting Attendance: Attend meetings or training courses as required.
Contract Drafting: Draft, review, and negotiate various commercial contracts, including software licenses, services agreements, statements of work, non-disclosure agreements, and vendor agreements.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborate cross-functionally with sales, professional services, finance, HR, support, and other departments at all levels throughout the organization.
Inquiry Analysis: Analyze and respond to time-sensitive inquiries concerning complex commercial contractual terms and conditions.

11. Contract Manager Roles

Contract Review: Review and comment on draft proposals, prime contracts, joint venture agreements, development partnerships, distribution agreements, and other legal contracts.
Negotiation Participation: Participate in contract negotiations and business development activities.
Relationship Building: Build collaborative working relationships with key internal stakeholders, such as legal, risk, treasury, sales, and field operations.
Project Administration: Maintain and administer the project opening and closing process for commercial and development engagements.
Vendor Management: Maintain vendor registration information for customer-vendor portals.
Policy Administration: Maintain and administer Echologics prevailing wage policies in collaboration with HR and legal departments.
Technical Engagement: Engage in technical details of solution delivery for technology products to outline risks associated with specific scopes of work.
Bond Coordination: Coordinate bid bonds, performance bonds, and similar instruments.
Legal Scoping Support: Support the scoping and procurement of specialized legal advice for new technology, specialized contractual arrangements, or country-specific procedures.
Contract Management Support: Assist in the maintenance of a contract management system.
Corporate Entity Maintenance: Assist in the maintenance of corporate entities.

12. Contract Manager Additional Details

Contract Management: Review, draft, negotiate, revise, and finalize contracts, including MSAs, SOWs, WOs, LOIs, clinical site contracts, vendor contracts, NDAs, independent contractor agreements, and internal contracts.
Policy Compliance: Ensure compliance with company policies, procedures, and risk management guidelines.
Third-Party Negotiation: Review and negotiate third-party contracts in alignment with Alira Health’s directives.
Governance Administration: Provide governance administration, including scheduling board meetings, writing and disseminating board minutes, and creating board agendas.
Process Improvement Support: Provide support for ongoing and special initiatives, including process improvement and contract template development.
Project Completion: Complete special projects as requested (e.g., support internal audits, due diligence efforts, ad-hoc projects).
Approval Oversight: Oversee the contract approval/execution process, documenting all required approvals, including legal and management authorizations.
Risk Identification: Identify risks and present risk analysis to leadership.
Renewal Coordination: Coordinate activities for contract renewals and cancellations/terminations, ensuring date-driven deadlines are met.
Legal Liaison: Liaise with internal and external attorneys and vendors.
Stakeholder Management: Manage a diverse range of internal and external stakeholders, including clients, customers, subcontractors, and advisors, to ensure objectives and contractual service levels are met within agreed KPIs and SLAs.
Service Management: Manage a wide range of FM services, including cleaning, office services, engineering, and security, ensuring the highest service delivery at all times.
Effective Communication: Communicate effectively with the customer regarding service delivery and any issues, including internal and external factors influencing service delivery.

13. Contract Manager Essential Functions

Project Oversight: Oversee projects from pre-start through to completion, including the defects period.
Relationship Management: Develop and maintain relationships with independent contractors, vendors, suppliers, and customers.
Site Monitoring: Monitor and oversee site managers and their projects, visiting all projects at least once a week.
Dispute Resolution: Agree on extra work and help resolve any disputes that may arise by continually monitoring subcontractors and suppliers.
Team Management: Adept at managing site managers and subcontractors.
Resource Coordination: Coordinate labor and resources on-site to deliver planned work and ensure it is carried out to a high standard.
Contract Compliance Supervision: Supervise contract execution to ensure compliance with regulatory guidelines.
Client Satisfaction: Ensure all client needs and requirements are met.
FM Strategy Development: Support the development of FM strategies in conjunction with the client, planning long- and short-term strategies for service delivery and projects.
Service Delivery Monitoring: Attend sites regularly to ensure the standard of FM service delivery.
Customer Focus: Create a customer-focused culture, developing excellent relationships and effective stakeholder management through good communication and collaboration.
Contractual Guidance: Provide advice, assistance, and guidance to project management and functions on project-specific contractual matters.
Contract Administration: Administer contracts, ensuring proper interpretation and implementation of administrative requirements and customer compliance with project-specific contractual requirements.

14. Contract Manager Role Purpose

Contract Support: Support the Personal Emergency Response Service (PERS) and Senior Living Sales teams by providing expertise in the evaluation, drafting, and negotiation of contracts, requests for proposals, and other commercial transactions.
Cross-Department Collaboration: Work in conjunction with internal departments (business, finance, legal, service, and sales).
Risk Minimization: Create contract solutions that minimize risk and provide value to Lifeline and its customers.
Value Creation: Develop contract solutions that minimize risk and provide value to Philips and customers.
Process Improvement: Apply lean methodology to streamline and improve end-to-end contract lifecycle management (CLM).
Sales Support: Assist sales stakeholders and the business with drafting and negotiating contracts and other documents related to the sale of PERS and Senior Living goods and services.
Risk Advisory: Advise leadership on contract risks and obligations, providing interpretation of terms and conditions while tracking KPIs.
Customer Satisfaction Focus: Drive the vision of customer satisfaction and efficient operation of contract lifecycle management (CLM).
Sales Contract Negotiation: Work with sales personnel and internal departments to evaluate and negotiate contracts for sales/service (i.e., product and service, consulting, marketing) and other related documents.
Policy Improvement: Implement and recommend improvements to policies and processes to ensure sales proposals and contractual agreements align with the company's business controls, policies, and procedures.
Template Development: Draft contract templates for new business models that support sales requirements.
Workflow Management: Maintain contract activity in workflow tools (OnBase, MS Office) and provide timely communication.

15. Contract Manager General Responsibilities

Quotation Coordination: Coordinate the preparation of after-sales quotations for company products on the in-house ERP system (including spare parts, revamps, and upgrades to machines).
Technical Specification Writing: Write and prepare technical specifications for capital expenditure spare parts and upgrades.
Spare Parts Preparation: Prepare spare parts lists for capital equipment project tenders.
Cost Benchmarking: Compare and benchmark incoming cost quotes from the purchasing and logistics departments.
Pricing Analysis: Conduct historic customer pricing analysis to ensure quotations align with market prices and previous order pricing.
Customer Negotiation Participation: Take part in customer negotiation meetings.
Purchase Order Review: Review commercial terms of customer POs for acceptance to company trading terms.
Job Coordination: Coordinate internal job creation and material requests to be issued to the purchasing office.
Kick-off Meeting Facilitation: Hold internal kick-off meetings for complex jobs such as upgrades, reverse-engineered products, and revamps.
Technical Collaboration: Work with the technical office to answer customer technical and commercial questions.
Job Status Follow-up: Work with the purchasing and logistics teams to follow up on job status to ensure on-time delivery.
Reporting: Prepare reports on offers and orders produced, providing status updates on the after-sales department to the sales director and managing director of the product line.
Performance Management: Ensure contract performance and profitability targets are achieved while maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction.

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