Spec, Contract Optimization

Join Vale today. Continuously learn throughout your career.

**Who We Are**:
Welcome to Vale. Our purpose is to improve life and transform the future. Together. We value our workforce and strive to offer continuous training and career development opportunities for our people.

Vale Base Metals is one of the world's largest producers of high-quality nickel and an important producer of copper and responsibly sourced cobalt. With headquarters in Toronto, Canada, and operations in Newfoundland & Labrador, Ontario, Manitoba, UK, Indonesia, and Brazil, we are delivering the critical building blocks for a cleaner, greener future.

We invite you to be part of our evolution.

**The Opportunity**

We are currently seeking a **Contract Optimization Specialist** to join our **North Atlantic Contract Management Office** in **Sudbury.** This is a **permanent** position.

The North Atlantic - Contract Optimization Specialist plays a pivotal role in identifying and minimizing risks associated with the availability, measurability and/or performance of critical goods and services contracts. The position leads strategic improvement projects to restore or enhance control of critical contracts, safeguard vendor relations, and support ongoing Contract Lifecycle demand planning and continuous improvement efforts. This position works closely with Regional Contract Management and Procurement/Warehousing resources and Vendors to investigate critical contract problems and opportunities and effectively manage changes to critical contracts across North Atlantic Operations sites.

**Accountabilities**:
**Contract Screening and Context Formalization**:

- Maintain a register of “Critical Goods and Services” that pose significant risk to the operations based on the potential and/or impact of “loss of control”.
- Review Contract terms and conditions to define operational context, technical requirements, role assignments, logístical and system/data monitoring constraints, and risks/failure modes associated with North Atlantic contracts earmarked as “critical.”
- Continuously monitor performance of identified critical goods and service contracts, re-assess criticality/risks following changes contract management strategy.
- Regularly screen new contracts against critical goods/services criteria and update the critical contracts register as appropriate.

**Contract Lifecycle Management**:

- Cultivate strong relationships with all members of the daily operation chain to ensure there are no gaps in formalizing critical contract demand or scope.
- Collaborate with regional contract management and procurement groups to investigate historical demand, constraints and performance issues related to critical contracts.
- Leverage input from stakeholders to develop consolidated demand plans for critical multi-plant/multi-region contracts, explore scope synergies and identify opportunities to optimize sourcing strategies.
- Monitor critical contract lifecycles and engage regional contract management and procurement stakeholders to prepare for key milestones.
- Perform technical reviews and leverage results of vendor performance evaluations (safety, productivity, schedule, quality, deliverables) in business cases that support decisions to re-tender or extend critical contracts.

**Strategic Projects and Cross-Functional Collaboration**:

- Lead strategic projects to optimize performance, improve measurement systems and minimize costs and risks related to critical bulk goods and services across North Atlantic Operations.
- Formalize project scope and establish a work breakdown structure outlining activities, deliverables and milestones related to support contract optimization projects.
- Collaborate with team members, cross-regional, and cross-departmental stakeholders to drive systemic improvements that impact multi-region/plant contract performance.
- Lead management of change activities related to contract optimization initiatives, monitor impact of contract changes, and highlight best practices.
- Multitask, prioritize and produce quality deliverables within established timeframes.

**Governance and Data Quality**:

- Verify that contract structure and measurement systems for critical contracts are sufficient to ensure the quality of data being collected for demand and performance measures across NA Regional Operations.
- Highlight best practices to continuously improve governance strategy to refine management of critical goods/services and further minimize risks to operations.

**Contract Execution and Claims Mitigation**:

- Provide interim contract management support for critical contracts where ownership is unclear or undefined in order to preserve Vendor relationships and ensure continuity of contract goods & services while long-term solutions are developed.
- Act as a central point of contact for Vendors of critical contracts to escalate multi-regional contract governance, performance or payment issues.
- Take swift action to engage