Contracts Manager III

Below is the Job Description for your reference:-

Job title: Contracts Manager III
Location : Waltham, MA
Duration : 12 months
Pay range: $45-$55/hr on W2

Job Description:

About the Role
Client is seeking a Procurement Delivery Lead - Electric Capital Construction to support NE Electric capital delivery construction procurement activity. This is a contractor role operating at a manager level as a senior individual contributor. The role will be the right hand to the director and will provide hands-on procurement, sourcing, commercial, bid execution, and process improvement support for complex electric construction work.
The successful candidate will partner closely with Procurement leadership, category managers, project management, engineering, construction, legal, finance, safety, operations, and business stakeholders to plan and execute strategic sourcing events. The role will focus on improving decisions around delivery models, bid readiness, sourcing quality, supplier engagement, commercial discipline, governance, award documentation, and overall procurement execution.
In addition to supporting active sourcing events, this role will be expected to provide thought leadership and strategic improvement capability. The individual will help Procurement scale its operating model to support a significantly growing capital delivery workplan by identifying process improvement opportunities, introducing new ways of working, implementing repeatable tools and templates, and leading execution of practical improvements that increase capacity, consistency, transparency, and stakeholder confidence.
The successful candidate must be comfortable operating in an environment where the work is complex, fast-moving, and not always fully defined. They will be expected to bring structure, pace, clarity, and constructive challenge to sourcing activity while supporting procurement managers and category leads in translating business requirements into executable procurement plans and leadership-ready deliverables.


Key Accountabilities
1. Capital Construction Bid Execution

• Lead or support sourcing events for NE Electric capital construction work, including transmission, distribution, substation, civil, underground, overhead line, and related electric infrastructure construction services.
• Develop and maintain sourcing event plans, bid calendars, procurement trackers, milestone schedules, responsibility matrices, action logs, issue logs, and decision logs.
• Support development of RFIs, RFPs, RFQs, bid forms, pricing schedules, evaluation criteria, supplier instructions, clarification logs, negotiation materials, and award recommendation packages.
• Ensure sourcing events are released to market with clear scopes of work, commercial requirements, pricing structures, safety expectations, schedule assumptions, evaluation methodology, and governance requirements.
• Coordinate supplier questions, stakeholder responses, bid clarifications, addenda, site visit requirements, pricing updates, evaluation meetings, and negotiation preparation.
• Identify and escalate bid execution risks, including incomplete scope definition, unclear commercial positions, unrealistic timelines, supplier capacity constraints, labor availability, safety concerns, or stakeholder alignment gaps.
• Drive sourcing activity to agreed timelines while maintaining appropriate governance, documentation, commercial discipline, and decision quality.

2. Construction Procurement and Commercial Strategy

• Advise on appropriate sourcing strategies and commercial models for construction work, including lump sum, unit price, time and materials, EPC, EPCM, framework agreements, master service agreements, contractor panels, and project-specific awards.
• Support the development of negotiation strategies that address cost, schedule, productivity, change management, risk allocation, payment terms, warranties, insurance, bonding, escalation, claims avoidance, and performance expectations.
• Apply total cost of ownership thinking to construction sourcing decisions, including mobilization, demobilization, outage constraints, productivity assumptions, change order exposure, contractor availability, supplier switching costs, and long-term delivery risk.
• Partner with Legal, Risk, Safety, Finance, Engineering, Construction, and Project Management to resolve commercial exceptions and align contractual positions with project delivery needs.
• Challenge unclear assumptions, gaps in scope, weak commercial positions, or sourcing approaches that could create downstream delivery, cost, schedule, safety, affordability, or governance risk.
• Prepare commercially sound recommendations that balance cost, risk, capacity, safety, schedule certainty, supplier performance, regulatory defensibility, and stakeholder requirements.

3. Thought Leadership and Strategic Improvement

• Serve as a thought partner to Procurement leadership by identifying opportunities to improve how construction sourcing work is planned, prioritized, governed, executed, measured, and communicated.
• Bring external perspective, construction procurement expertise, and practical market insight to challenge legacy ways of working and support more effective delivery of the growing NE Electric capital portfolio.
• Develop and recommend strategic improvements to sourcing strategy, supplier engagement, contracting approach, governance routines, bid evaluation discipline, workload visibility, and stakeholder alignment.
• Translate strategic improvement ideas into practical, executable plans with clear deliverables, timelines, owners, and success measures.
• Lead implementation of targeted improvements that strengthen Procurement's ability to support increased capital delivery volume without relying solely on additional headcount.
• Identify where current processes, handoffs, templates, decision rights, communication routines, or governance steps are slowing execution or reducing quality.
• Promote a culture of continuous improvement, disciplined execution, constructive challenge, and practical problem-solving.
• Help Procurement move from reactive bid support to a more proactive, planned, and scalable sourcing support model.

4. Process Improvement, Standardization, and Scalability

• Assess current procurement and sourcing processes supporting NE Electric capital delivery and identify opportunities to improve efficiency, transparency, consistency, stakeholder experience, and cycle time.
• Design and implement practical process improvements that enable Procurement to support a significantly growing construction and capital delivery workplan.
• Establish standardized sourcing tools, templates, playbooks, bid packages, evaluation models, negotiation frameworks, project trackers, risk registers, reporting routines, and governance materials.
• Develop repeatable sourcing and bid management methodologies that can be leveraged across multiple construction projects, categories, and procurement teams.
• Introduce new ways of working that improve speed, quality, stakeholder engagement, commercial outcomes, and workload visibility while maintaining appropriate governance and controls.
• Partner with Procurement leadership to identify bottlenecks, non-value-added activities, unclear ownership, inconsistent practices, and organizational inefficiencies impacting sourcing execution.
• Leverage data, lessons learned, supplier feedback, market intelligence, and stakeholder input to recommend improvements to sourcing strategies, contractor engagement models, panel structures, and commercial approaches.
• Introduce scalable management tools, dashboards, reporting routines, and performance metrics that provide improved visibility into sourcing pipelines, bid status, risks, workload, and resource demands.
• Support the development of a more proactive procurement operating model by improving planning, forecasting, prioritization, stakeholder engagement, and resource allocation.
• Document and institutionalize best practices to create sustainable improvements that remain in place beyond the contractor engagement.

5. Procurement Manager and Category Team Support

• Operate as a senior individual contributor providing practical, hands-on support to procurement managers, category leads, buyers, and business partners.
• Help translate leadership direction and business requirements into clear procurement actions, deliverables, timelines, ownership, and decision points.
• Provide structure to complex or ambiguous sourcing activity through templates, trackers, meeting routines, issue logs, risk registers, milestone plans, and clear follow-up.
• Support preparation for leadership updates, stakeholder meetings, sourcing governance reviews, supplier negotiation sessions, and award approval discussions.
• Coach and guide procurement team members on construction sourcing best practices, bid discipline, commercial strategy, supplier engagement, documentation quality, and stakeholder management.
• Strengthen consistency, accountability, execution quality, and follow-through across construction procurement events without acting as a direct people manager.
• Support Procurement leadership by helping ensure commitments, risks, decisions, and next steps are visible, tracked, and actively managed.

6. Stakeholder Partnership and Business Alignment

• Partner with NE Electric business stakeholders to understand project objectives, schedule drivers, construction constraints, regulatory commitments, budget considerations, field execution needs, and operational requirements.
• Work closely with project management, engineering, construction, safety, finance, legal, risk, and operations teams to ensure sourcing strategies reflect real business and field execution needs.
• Facilitate alignment across stakeholders where requirements, priorities, timelines, or commercial assumptions are unclear, incomplete, or misaligned.
• Communicate procurement status, risks, decisions, tradeoffs, and required actions in a clear, concise, and executive-ready manner.
• Support stakeholder confidence in Procurement by bringing transparency, follow-through, practical commercial guidance, and credible execution support to sourcing activity.
• Ensure procurement recommendations are aligned with business priorities, governance requirements, customer value, capital delivery objectives, and long-term affordability.

7. Supplier and Market Engagement

• Support supplier market engagement for electric construction services, including market sounding, bidder list development, supplier outreach, prequalification, and supplier engagement planning.
• Assess contractor capability, market capacity, regional availability, labor constraints, safety performance, geographic coverage, equipment availability, financial stability, and delivery track record.
• Help identify supply chain risks and opportunities across the construction contractor base, including capacity limitations, specialty labor needs, competing utility demand, schedule conflicts, and market pricing pressures.
• Support the development of supplier engagement plans that improve bid participation, clarify requirements, improve competition, and strengthen supplier accountability.
• Build appropriate performance expectations into sourcing and contracting materials, including safety, schedule, quality, responsiveness, commercial discipline, reporting, productivity, and project execution requirements.
• Support effective handoff from sourcing to contract management, project delivery, or supplier relationship management teams.

8. Governance, Controls, and Documentation

• Ensure procurement activity is well documented, auditable, and aligned with internal policies, sourcing governance, approval requirements, business commitments, and regulatory expectations.
• Maintain clear records of sourcing decisions, evaluation outcomes, negotiation positions, commercial rationale, risk tradeoffs, and award recommendations.
• Support procurement documentation that is suitable for leadership review, audit, regulatory inquiry, and internal governance.
• Use procurement systems and tools effectively, including SAP, Ariba, e-sourcing platforms, Excel-based bid analysis, trackers, and reporting dashboards.
• Identify process gaps, inefficient handoffs, unclear decision rights, inconsistent documentation, or governance weaknesses and recommend practical improvements.
• Promote consistent use of procurement templates, evaluation models, risk logs, communication routines, sourcing governance materials, and decision-making records.

Required Skills and Experience:

• 7+ years of experience in procurement, strategic sourcing, commercial management, contract negotiation, supply chain, vendor management, construction contracting, or capital project procurement.
• Significant experience supporting construction sourcing, infrastructure procurement, utility procurement, energy projects, EPC/EPCM environments, capital projects, or complex field services.
• Demonstrated experience developing and managing RFPs, RFQs, bid packages, pricing schedules, evaluation models, negotiation plans, sourcing strategies, and award recommendation materials.
• Strong understanding of construction procurement and contracting considerations, including scope definition, pricing structure, schedule commitments, safety requirements, labor availability, change orders, claims risk, insurance, bonding, warranties, and payment milestones.
• Proven ability to assess supplier capacity, contractor qualifications, market constraints, labor availability, commercial risk, and delivery feasibility.
• Strong commercial acumen and negotiation skills, with the ability to balance cost, risk, quality, schedule, safety, affordability, and stakeholder needs.
• Demonstrated ability to lead process improvement, introduce new ways of working, standardize tools and templates, and implement practical operating model improvements.
• Ability to provide thought leadership, constructive challenge, and strategic recommendations while remaining highly execution-focused.
• Experience working with cross-functional stakeholders, including project management, engineering, construction, legal, finance, risk, safety, operations, and senior leadership.
• Ability to operate independently in a senior individual contributor capacity while influencing managers, stakeholders, suppliers, and cross-functional teams.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to prepare concise, executive-ready updates, sourcing summaries, risk assessments, improvement plans, and decision materials.
• Strong organizational skills with the ability to bring structure, prioritization, and follow-through to multiple complex sourcing events and improvement initiatives.
• Experience with procurement tools and systems such as SAP, Ariba, e-sourcing platforms, Excel, PowerPoint, dashboards, and sourcing trackers.