Contract Specialist

One of our major oil and gas clients is seeking a Contract Specialist to work on a 12 - month assignment in their facilities in Houston, TX.

Summary

• Provides specialist advice and executes Contracting activities in line with specified guidelines and business requirements to maximize value, and ensure surety of supply at a tolerable risk for the business.
• Reporting to a Wells Contracting Manager, the Contracts Specialist will be responsible for goods and services relating to drilling activities, including but not limited to OCTG, ROV and associated goods and services.
• Contracts Specialist will act as an interface with key suppliers and internal stakeholders to develop and execute sourcing plans and category strategies.
  
  

Responsibilities

Procurement

• Applies Contracts & Procurement processes in alignment with corporate guidelines, and local jurisdictional requirements.
• Develops effective relationships with internal business leaders to understand business requirements, to forecast demand, and to verify established contracts are effective.
• Develops collaborative relationships with suppliers to ensure optimum delivery quality and sustained performance in line with business objectives.
• Supports Contracts & Procurement Leadership teams to provide insight into the current activities and initiatives.
• Identifies and implements Contracts improvement initiatives
• Work collaboratively across Supply Chain (Region, Global and across sub-functions) and operational stakeholders to develop and execute category strategies
• Deliver sustainable unit cost reduction through developing and executing category strategies
• Ensure category strategy alignment to strategies for categories monitored at a global level
• Drive collaboration across the region to identify and execute opportunities to reduce external spend through demand, price and productivity (technology) levers
  
  

Sourcing Strategy and Planning

• Develops and executes sourcing activities contributing to the Supply Sourcing Plan.
• Collects requirements and analyses key data inputs from multiple sources (internal and external) to build robust category and sourcing strategies with a near, mid- and long-term outlook.
• Develops category strategies that minimise supply risk to the business, optimise cost and contribute to process automation.
• Validates category strategies and contract coverage to support the Business Strategies and budget.
• Plans and executes portfolio of sourcing projects enabling category strategies and manage on-time delivery minimising disruption to the business operations.
• Executes activities that contribute to National content commitments.
• Develops sourcing and negotiation strategies using market intelligence and best practice tools such as should cost modelling, e-Auctions, TCO analysis
• Negotiates with suppliers & executing tenders of strategic subcategories to reduce total cost to the business
• Ensures integration of the category strategy across Supply (Purchasing, inventory and warehousing) to ensure lowest inbound supply chain cost
  
  

Tender and Contract Management

• Develops, publishes and manages tenders and their commercial evaluation in line with sourcing projects.
• Coordinates the technical and any other non-commercial evaluation of tenders prior to negotiation.
• Conducts and leads negotiations with suppliers post tender evaluation.
• Creates, manages and monitors contracts.
• Performs contract variations in line with business requirements.
• Develops cost optimisation strategies that deliver cost savings.
  
  

Supplier Management

• Manages assigned portfolio of suppliers supporting the business ensuring optimal usage.
• Performs supplier selection, qualification & on-boarding in line with local requirements and regulation.
• Executes supplier performance reviews to track performance with contract and business requirements.
• Designs and implements supplier development and recognition programs to maintain effective value-based relationships.
• Collaborates with Inventory Analysis and Optimisation to maintain accurate lead times with Suppliers.
• Resolves supplier performance issues and escalations.
  
  

Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree – multiple fields such as Supply chain, Business Administration, Engineering, Chemistry.
• A Masters degree in the above fields or an MBA is desirable.
• Knowledge of Excel at an intermediate level (e.g., pivot tables & charts, multiple criteria lookups, nested logical/IF formulas, data cleansing, array formulas, etc.).
• Relevant industry experience with a focus on Supply Chain Management or Drilling and Completion services such as OCTG, ROV and associated goods and services.
• Experience with ERP systems (SAP)
• Bi-lingual preferred (English-Spanish)
• Strong communication skills
• Advanced strategic thinking skills
• Advanced problem-solving skills
• Experience with stakeholder engagement and management
• Strong business acumen
• Ability to operate in uncertainty and make strategic decisions based on the situation
• Proven experience in strategic sourcing, negotiation preparation and execution, category strategy analysis and formulation
• Proven experience in financial acumen and analysis
• Proven ability to influence across functions
• Competency (commercial, technical) in specified category
• Sound understanding of oil gas industry preferred
• Ability to analyze complex business processes, risk factors and control systems
• Risk management skills