Ideally the Contract Manager should have most, if not all, of the following skills:
• If appointed early enough the Contract Manager will need to manage the Transition Period. Therefore strong project management skills are valuable.
• Good communication skills: the Contract Manager will spend a majority of time dealing with people - the private sector team; the Authority team; stakeholders. Relationships can break down when parties do not understand each other's position or where poor communication has led to misunderstanding.
• An understanding of the waste management industry and the regulations applying to waste management in the UK.
• Commercial and negotiation skills: the ability to understand and negotiate Changes in accordance with the Change Protocol. The benchmarking and market testing exercises are other occasions on which the Contract Manager will need to negotiate with the Contractor. The Contract Manager will act as project champion within the Authority and will need to negotiate internally within the Authority.
• Financial skills and awareness: the Payment Mechanism for waste contracts can be complicated. The Contract Manager will need to understand the mechanism and ensure that the recording system is consistent with Authority procedures.
• Skills to manage change; the operational period will mean a new way of working for many Authorities as they have now become procurer of services rather than deliverer. Users may perceive the new way of working as a loss of control therefore the Contract Manager should prepare users and support them if there are problems during the Transition Period.
• Analytical skills: the Contract Manager will need to analyse the contractual documents and reflect the provisions in practical monitoring processes.
• A robust problem solving attitude based on confidence in their own commercial ability to spot areas of concern and to take decisions.
• An understanding that good relations between Contractor and the Authority also involves proactivity, trust and respect for each other's roles and not a constantly adversarial approach being taken with each other. In many areas and on many occasions the Contractor will provide services well above what the Authority has strictly required and an adversarial approach may disincentivise the Contractor from performing well ahead of Contract in future.
In order to attract good candidates for the Contract Manager post, the Authority should consider the long term career opportunities it is able to offer applicants. However it should also be aware that it may not be possible to find a single individual who has all these attributes. This can be addressed by assembling a team which has the necessary breadth of skills. A Contract Manager should have access to any in house experience that exists within the Authority. A Contract Manager's forum involving all the individuals working on contract management in the Authority is one way that experience can be shared. It may be also be appropriate to widen the forum to include Contract Managers from the district responsible for managing the collection Contracts that have an interface with the party collecting the waste.
It is not recommended that the Authority should appoint an external consultant for the Contract Manager role. An Authority staff member will be likely to be at a lower cost than for employing external consultants and the individual is usually better placed by working within the organisation if a decision is required urgently. There are also potential advantages if the Contract Manager is appointed from existing Authority staff, providing the necessary skills can be demonstrated.