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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.

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.

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.

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.

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 scalable management tools, dashboards, reporting routines, and performance metrics that provide improved visibility into sourcing pipelines, bid status, risks, workload, and resource demands.

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.