Review meetings are a critically important part of keeping your contract on track. As previously discussed for catering and cleaning services , hopefully you’ve been keeping in contact with your area manager or operations manager through informal meetings.
Frequency
Formal meetings should be planned in advance. The frequency may be broadly dictated by whatever was agreed in the tender process or contract discussions, although there shouldn’t be a problem in requesting an urgent meeting if there is a particular incident or issue that needs to be urgently discussed. You may decide to have weekly or fortnightly meetings at the start of a new contract, but these can usually be reduced to termly meetings once the service has bedded in.
Attendees
Please consider who should be part of any particular meeting. Your formal meetings may regularly include yourself and another school/Trust representative, plus the contractor’s Area Manager and their on-site manager. But of course, if you wish to discuss a particular problem with an on-site staff member, it is important to have that conversation in private.
Planning the meeting
Have an agenda! Make sure you have a list of the items/actions arising and outstanding from the previous meeting, plus any discussions that have occurred in the meantime. This is not an exhaustive list but, the agenda should cover elements such as Staffing, KPI Reporting, Financial Performance, Training, the current/proposed Menu (for catering) or the periodics (for cleaning). It is important to have an agenda so that you can be sure that no items get missed and you have the opportunity to discuss everything on your mind. Don’t forget to ensure there is an AOB to enable the contractor to discuss any points that they want to raise too.
Nothing to discuss? It is still important to hold a meeting anyway (don’t cancel) as the contractor may have things that they wish to discuss with you. But maybe you can hold your meeting virtually if you don’t think it will take very long, saving everyone a bit of travel time.
During the meeting
If you haven’t already done so, this is the time to discuss any discrepancies or concerns that have arisen from your review of the financial performance. It is also the opportunity to discuss any other concerns you may have about the contractor’s operational performance.
No concerns or issues? Please make sure that you provide that positive feedback too – it is so important for the contractor to know what is going brilliantly, as well as what isn’t. This is about forming a positive partnership not just using the meeting to challenge the contractor.
Make sure you take some notes – they don’t need to be a record of every word uttered, but they do at least need to include decisions made and actions to be taken ahead of the next meeting. Agree any deadlines/timeframe for actions, especially ones that need to be completed urgently. Having an audit trail of discussions and actions is vital when performance is consistently poor.
Don’t feel you need to agree to anything during the meeting: there is nothing wrong with saying that you will follow up with further information following the meeting, or that you need time to make a decision / discuss with colleagues. You should never feel pressured into accepting a change to the service without having some time to review what is being proposed and ensuring you fully understand it.
Before the meeting has ended, confirm the date and time of the next one. Hopefully you have your meetings planned for the whole academic year (diaries book up so quickly!), but it is worth checking that everyone is still available on the agreed date.
After the meeting
Circulate the notes and actions, ideally within 48 hours of the meeting when memories are still fresh. Make sure you follow up on the actions, and any issues raised.
And that’s it!
No, sorry, it’s not quite that simple. You will need to keep monitoring the contract throughout its life, and also with any future contractors. It may feel onerous, a significant time commitment, but it is vital to ensure that you continue to get value for money from your outsourced contracts. Good monitoring can also head off issues before they become critical, allowing you to ‘nip things in the bud’.
Need help?
If you’d like support with your contract monitoring, please get in touch – we offer a contract monitoring service and would be very happy to help. You can email contractmonitoring@minervapcs.com or call the team on 01256 467107.