Contract management in social housing is often seen as the dull end of procurement, the bit no one really talks about. Instead, it’s the more visible, high‑energy part - creating strategies, evaluating suppliers, awarding contracts - that gets the attention.

One reason for this perception problem is the old ‘let and forget’ mentality. After the fanfare of award, contracts are commonly handed over to busy service managers who have a stack of other responsibilities. The administrative grind of tracking deadlines, spotting contract changes and filing paperwork can get lost in the juggle of day to day work.

Invisible success is also to blame. When a contract is managed well, nothing bad happens, so value can go unnoticed. It’s only when things go wrong that people see the strategic risk created by weak oversight.

I speak to housing associations and local authorities every day and I’ve noticed many more leaders not just calling out the strategic risk around poor contract management but having to get involved themselves because of the difficulties that arise.

So why this renewed focus? One reason is ongoing geo-political and economic headwinds. Price inflation continues to climb, pushed up by the war in Iran, and social landlords are under pressure to find efficiencies just to maintain existing services.

Once different departments have done the obvious cost trimming, procurement is left to identify any remaining inefficiencies. And that’s why attention is shifting to post-award delivery, where, according to research, an average of 9% of annual contract value is lost through poor contract management.

For example, a housing provider appoints a contractor to replace 100 kitchens at a cost of £650,000. Works begins at pace but then problems emerge around labour shortages, product supply and installation quality. This affects the speed and standard of works, and the contractor is only able to replace 85 kitchens for the agreed budget.

But it’s not just cost savings that are impacted by poor contract management. Pledges around social value and innovation can be agreed and then lost if post-award checks and balances are not upheld.

It’s often resource, or lack of it, that plays a part. Some housing providers have only one or two people in their asset team and dozens of contracts to manage. Each one has multiple metrics and it’s time intensive to check commitments in each and then hold suppliers to task.

Another reason for contract management moving up the priority list is the evidence burden presented by regulatory reporting.

Scottish procurement rules require housing organisations to report annually on any contract above £50,000. Social landlords must set out what was actually spent, whether the original objectives were met, and how far any community benefit commitments were delivered.

On top of that, every three years the Scottish Government’s Procurement and Commercial Improvement Programme (PCIP) formally assesses contract management as part of a housing provider’s overall procurement capability.

Most of the procurement teams I speak to are meeting these requirements through manual effort: pulling data from multiple systems, chasing suppliers for information, looking back through emails, but this is a fragmented, laborious process and can lead to mistakes.

So, how can social landlords improve their contract management? Over the years I’ve noticed some common building blocks.

Get everyone clear from day one

Headaches can arise because stakeholders aren’t clear on their responsibilities or the agreed ways of working. Address this by appointing a contract manager and senior responsible owner and then setting up a ‘single source of truth’ contract folder so key documents are easy to locate. Create a handover pack including the signed contract itself, key terms, KPIs, pricing, main contacts and risks. Define and baseline KPIs and then agree reporting templates with suppliers.

Create a governance pattern and culture

Never underestimate the power of regular, open communication with suppliers. This promotes trust and transparency and will help you tackle issues before they escalate. Schedule all operational, performance review and steering meetings for the year and put them in people’s diaries. Ensure meetings have agendas, minutes and action logs and track these until closure and remember to celebrate the positives as well as managing the negatives.

Alongside this, put training and coaching in place for new contract managers to boost their capability and confidence.

Move away from spreadsheets

It’s common for contracts to exist as hard copies, PDFs and other digital formats. Housing organisations have to pull out relevant data and put it all in one place - often a single spreadsheet used to track multiple contracts. This makes it hard to check supplier performance against KPIs, and social landlords find themselves relying on data suppliers provide themselves.

Tackle this by setting up a dedicated platform or dashboard with defined KPI targets and tolerances. Use validated data (not anecdotes) to discuss supplier performance and ensure you can analyse trends and identify early warning signs. Harness the dashboard to translate social value commitments into measurable indicators that are monitored alongside core performance. And ensure the same dashboard can also track other key data such as contract expenditure and expiry dates, supplier payment terms and operative level spend so you can manage everything in one place.

There are numerous post-award controls that support good contract management. But accountability, communication, record-keeping and a focus on outcomes are, for me, the fundamentals. Outcomes are especially important because ultimately, making sure contractors deliver what they promised is all about delivering for tenants and that’s what makes our sector tick.