United Kingdom
7+ years’ experience as a trilingual contracts and tender/bid manager in biotech, R&D, engineering and consultancy companies covering the EMEA region. I am skilled in working with cross-functional teams at all levels of seniority and multinational backgrounds.
• Manage preparation and submission of bids (RFI/RFP/EOI/ITT) for tenders: review tender documentation, prepare administrative inputs, assign actions to internal stakeholders (Sales, Finance, Logistics, Quality, Technical Support and Field Service) and collate their contributions. • Order management: process purchase orders, assign shipping dates, liaise with shipping department, monitor delivery progress, act as first point of contact for order related questions or issues raised by customers. • Enforce quoting and order fulfilment processes. • Review draft commercial contract terms and conditions against legal checklist of acceptable elements to identify and mitigate legal risks.
• Reviewed and negotiated legal documents in English, French and Italian including commercial contract terms and conditions, framework agreements, contract amendments as well as NDAs. • Identified legal risks and negotiated mitigations, whilst maintaining compliance with corporate policies and commercial processes. • Worked closely with the Legal team on difficult negotiations by obtaining approval for clauses that posed higher risk to the company and liaised with external counsel for country specific queries related to tenders and customer contracts. • Drafted contractual clauses which were subsequently approved by the Legal team. • Managed preparation and submission of tenders: reviewed tender documents, prepared administrative inputs, reviewed and red-lined contract terms, assigned actions to internal stakeholders (Sales, Legal, Finance, Product Management and Operations) and collated their contributions. • Created and maintained a repository of frequently requested corporate documents (e.g. certificate of incorporation, VAT certificate, proof of payment of taxes). • Developed contract management and tender preparation/submission processes. • Assisted with the recruitment and training of contract managers in Europe and the USA.
• Reviewed and negotiated legal documents, including commercial contract terms and conditions, NDAs and framework agreements for projects in various sectors (e.g. Aerospace, Power, Automotive, Transportation) in EMEA, APAC and North America. • Reviewed contractual and commercial aspects of proposals. • Identified and mitigated potential contractual and commercial risks during the proposal process and terms and condition negotiations, escalating to senior management to obtain approval for higher-risk clauses. • Ensured contractual obligations were communicated to and understood by the project team. • Worked closely with internal stakeholders on specific contractual areas: the IP Management team on access background IP, access to IP and IP exploitation; the Quality Assurance team on government security classification, confidentiality and standards; the Finance team on recovery of overdue payments. • Ensured proposals comply with UK export control laws and regulations. • Advised internal business teams and management on export control. Addressed, with the support of the relevant internal stakeholder, export control related issues if they arose during the delivery of a project.
• Reviewed EU and UK government funded R&D bids within tight deadlines. • Advised stakeholders on quality and risk of R&D bids against funding body requirements, company policies and procedures. • Collated and analysed R&D proposal submission metrics to measure business performance. • Advised senior management on proposed changes to bid preparation procedures to improve success rates and implemented those changes. • Developed tools and templates to assist with preparing competitive bids; trained engineers and researchers to use the tools and templates, as well as to understand the rules of new funding programmes. • Identified EU and UK grants relevant to the company's business and routed them to the most appropriate teams.
• Assisted Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and Research Organisations on how to find and select relevant EC R&D funding opportunities, advised them on procedures, distributed relevant bid documentation and assisted with partner searches. • Managed 3 national initiatives which involved supervising daily operations and reporting on progress. • Interacted daily with internal and external stakeholders (mainly Bpi regional sales teams, and executives of SMEs). • Promoted the services offered by two EU funded networks (FitForHealth and TransCoSME) to SMEs. • Presented at 3 information days, with audiences of 30-100 academics and business leaders, on topics including EC grants for R&D and innovation aimed at SMEs and the health sector. • Attended project meetings as company representative.