Contract Manager (Synergy Programme)
| Posting date: | 27 June 2025 |
|---|---|
| Salary: | £55,557 to £66,058 per year |
| Hours: | Full time |
| Closing date: | 10 July 2025 |
| Location: | Birmingham |
| Company: | Government Recruitment Service |
| Job type: | Permanent |
| Job reference: | 410334/1 |
Summary
We’re looking for people who are flexible, intuitive and are comfortable taking high levels of volume, speed and complexity in their stride.
A number of exciting new roles have come up in the Synergy Programme, a cross-departmental group formed in response to Government Business Service’s request for individual departments to group together in ‘clusters’ to drive efficiencies, increase buying power and improve the quality of shared service to our end users – our people.
The Synergy Programme is the largest of five departmental clusters, comprising the Ministry of Justice, Department for Work and Pensions, Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Home Office. The Department of Work and Pensions hosts the Synergy Programme. Your work will impact the procurement arrangements for the next 15 years, impacting over 50% of all Civil Servants – that’s 230,000 people across the four departments and arm’s length bodies.
Success of the Programme is crucial as Civil Servants rely on shared services to provide business critical tools in human resources, finance, payroll, and procurement. It affects everything we do, from joining a department as a new starter, the way we claim for expenses, how we buy goods and services such as our laptops and canteen provisions, to the way we receive our pensions when we retire.
If you’re someone who can use your experience to streamline procurement to drive out error, waste, and duplication we want to hear from you. But most importantly, we’re looking for applications from people who can also demonstrate a passion for our core ambition - delivering a once in a generation, transformed service that Civil Servants will use as a result of the Synergy Programme.
Whilst no 2 days will be the same, your duties will include:
- Provide operational ownership, influence and management throughout the life of contracts.
- Maintain a live Contract Management Plan (CMP) and ensure all associated trackers (risks, issues, variations, performance) are kept up to date.
- Support the Head of Contract Management by owning the contractual relationship between Synergy and Suppliers.
- Offer exceptional customer service to internal and external stakeholders, to build strong links and understand cross-cutting issues, whilst contributing towards their resolution.
- Act as a central point of contact and source of information for operational stakeholders and end users.
- Identify opportunities for continuous improvement in all aspects of contracts.
- Develop and maintain supplier performance dashboards (Excel or Power BI), reporting monthly to programme governance boards.
- Performance management of the achievement of qualitative and quantitative standards against mutual key performance indicators.
- Ensuring the timeliness and accuracy of supplier data entry and returns.
- Provide advice on contract management practices, providing guidance and insights to manage and develop key supplier relationships.
- Financial management of contracts, working with Finance and Commercial colleagues to ensure forecasts are accurate and spend is accurate against supplier delivery.
- Ensuring contract changes are appropriately controlled and supporting stakeholders through the correct governance channels.
- Support exit and transition planning, ensuring all exit-related obligations are documented, risk-assessed, and monitored through governance.
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