Supplier management

Question 1

Give me a context of how you would deal with quality assurance issue from a supplier?

Answer 1

• suppliers who I work with have several KPIs in place within their contracts
• such as reporting timeframes, quality of report (queries), response to queries (days)
• financial incentive to deliver on KPI’s (can withold 10% of fees until improvement seen or costs disallowed in more serious cases)
• monthly performance meetings which I feed in to as case manager between commercial team, leads and delivery

Question 2

How would you manage suppliers?

Answer 2

• feedback to senior team on supplier performance
• ensure deadlines are met through KPI’s
• scrutinise and approve supplier fees
• develop collaborative relationships

Question 3

What is supplier management?

Answer 3

the management of internal and external facilities service providers.

Question 4

Have you been involved with procurement of suppliers?

Answer 4

• in order to ensure a competitive tender process suppliers receive an invitation to tender
• recently a new supplier was appointed and was one of 7 companies who tendered for the work
• scored on resource, rates, experience in the work and benchmarked against each other

-single tender actions are also used - the action of awarding a contract, without undertaking a competitive tendering exercise. However benchmarking will be carried out to ensure VFM is achieved.

Question 5

What is an early warning notice?

Answer 5

It places a requirement on both parties to notify the other if they become aware of any matter that could affect time, cost or quality.