Senior Contract Specialist

Every day we deliver safe and secure energy to homes, communities, and businesses. We are there when people need us the most. We connect people to the energy they need for the lives they live. The pace of change in society and our industry is accelerating and our expertise and track record puts us in an unparalleled position to shape the sustainable future of our industry.

To be successful we must anticipate the needs of our customers, reducing the cost of energy delivery today and pioneering the flexible energy systems of tomorrow. This requires us to deliver on our promises and always look for new opportunities to grow, both ourselves and our business.

To develop, define and achieve sound contractual partnering arrangements, deploying appropriate professional teams to support the arrangements and leading on negotiations to maximize National Grid's commercial advantage and ensuring suppliers perform to the contractual agreements. Supporting the development and implementation of appropriate commercial strategies, playing a central role in eliminating preventable value loss and ensuring contract delivery within the Energy Efficiency team in the US. Experience should include supplier relationship management, commercial negotiations, systems and analytics, market supplier development and a clear, working knowledge of current industry trends

• Assess contract risks and executing mitigation plans ensuring opportunities to drive value and identify risks.
• Manage the policies and processes for EE compliance and audit, ensuring delivery by suppliers and internal stakeholders of the policies and procedures.
• Provide the commercial lead on supplier contract, providing commercial leadership and expertise across a range of contracts as required to maximise the efficiency and value of contracts.
• Lead Quarterly Business Reviews with top 10 suppliers within EE by tracking KPIs, contract terms, to help both Procurement and Business teams understand the supplier landscape. Help identify and work with the supplier and business contract managers regularly to ensure improvements are made where KPIs aren't being met.
• Partner with and coach EE suppliers to encourage new entrants to the market to ensure availability of equipment of an appropriate standard, cost basis and quality to meet demand.
• Lead on implementation of a Supplier/Contractor Performance and Monitoring process, reporting on contract performance and escalating where needed.
• Lead on the commercial management of development contracts, providing expertise and experience in order to determine and agree contractual requirements that will out-turn within budget and deliver against business objectives, ensuring they comply with relevant policies and procedures and drive maximum and mutual benefit to National Grid.
• Provide specialist commercial support to other teams / projects within as and when required for specific projects with which they are involved.
• Work effectively with EE Vendor Performance and Compliance team to deliver clear and cohesive value to business stakeholders including but not limited to designing and analysing KPIs that can be leveraged across programs and contracts to ensure EE program performance while maximizing cost reduction strategies (IE penalty metrics).

• Experience of setting up, negotiating and managing supplier contractual arrangements.
• Customer management experience, with a strong track record of influencing customers and partner organisations.
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills, capable of working effectively with cross-functional teams, including the newly created EE Vendor Management team, customer teams, legal, finance, etc.
• Ability to analyse KPIs and contract data, to manage contract performance and support commercial decision making.
• Required 5+ years' experience in contract negotiations and contract management. Strong working knowledge of SAP, Ariba & P2P systems preferred.
• Understanding of energy efficiency programs and program management preferred.
• Degree or equivalent

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