Vendor Compliance Specialist

at  Toronto Community Housing

Business Unit/Internal Escalation

• Primary contact and VCO escalation point for business unit issues, concerns and confidential matters related to TCHC vendors to ensure compliance with TCHC contracts, policies, SOPs and expectations
• Manage and resolve complex and sometimes sensitive vendor performance and payment issues escalated from business units through a detailed investigation, research, analysis and careful review of:
• contracts/agreements/terms and conditions
• budgets
• invoices
• change orders
• scopes of work
• discussions with business units and other stakeholders
• correspondence/minutes (written or otherwise)
• compiling analysis and making recommendations for VCO leadership and business unit review
• Act with integrity and as an impartial investigative authority while auditing the actions completed by the business unit to ensure the validity of the escalation raised and to ensure compliance with best practices, TCHC policies/procedures and relevant regulatory policies
• Engage Legal Services, Strategic Procurement and other TCHC divisions/units, as needed, to work collaboratively and diligently to investigate and resolve business unit escalations
• Govern, lead and facilitate the construction adjudication activities and processes, as fall under Prompt Payment legislation, which the VCO is responsible for. Work closely with Project Managers and Legal services when TCHC initiates Notice of Adjudication (NOA), following the mandated construction adjudication timelines
• Ensure timely updates of the Adjudication case and prompt closure of file once adjudication is complete
• Work closely with internal TCHC divisions and business units to build trust and confidence
• Thoroughly prepare and facilitate TCHC business unit escalation discussions, including agenda setting, preparation of analysis and investigation findings for presentation, documenting stakeholder feedback, VCO recommendations and action plans required to support completion of project deliverables
• Establish and facilitate regular meetings with business unit representatives to help identify vendor performance issues before escalation into larger incidents of concern
• Manage and monitor various proxy mailboxes related to internal business unit escalations
• Develop documentation, correspondence, memoranda and other documents, with or without the use of templates, taking into consideration the needs of TCHC, its tenants, corporate policies and legal implications relating to business unit escalations

Vendor/External Escalation

• Establish and maintain collaborative partnerships with TCHC vendors
• Strong ability to facilitate communication with two or more opposing parties in dispute while demonstrating confidentiality; lead dispute from the start with the goal of facilitating a successful and amicable resolution
• Ability to act with integrity and strong ethical authority to ensure vendor escalations and any resulting penalties or consequences are fair and balanced towards all TCHC vendors
• Govern, lead and facilitate the construction adjudication activities and processes, as fall under Prompt Payment legislation, which the VCO is responsible for. Work closely with Project Managers and Legal services when vendors issue Notice of Adjudication (NOA) to TCHC, following the mandated construction adjudication timelines
• Act with integrity and fairness demonstrating professional ability to interview witnesses, disputing parties and tenants
• Ability to examine confidential documents, budgets, contracts, invoices, change orders and other relevant artifacts in detail to gather information regarding the dispute/escalation under investigation; while working independently and with minimal guidance
• Serve as primary contact and VCO escalation point on all matters of concern or questions relating to vendor relationship with TCHC
• Engage vendors, TCHC business units and divisions as needed and carefully investigate, research, analyze and review escalations raised by TCHC vendors relating to vendor performance evaluations, payment and other matters of vendor concern
• Facilitate regular performance discussions with TCHC vendors and respective business unit representatives to diligently document and track vendor progress on outstanding actions and deliverables
• Lead and facilitate discussions with Design and Engineering (D&E) and D&E vendors, assessing repeated refusal of work, develop recommendations and apply consequences, if any, to the vendor
• Manage and monitor various proxy mailboxes to support vendor escalations to the VCO

Vendor Performance Evaluation

• Oversee the administration of vendor performance evaluations for Construction and Preservation, Preventative Maintenance, Demand Maintenance, Design and Engineering, Information Technology and Corporate divisions
• Continuously auditing completed vendor performance evaluations to ensure scoring and evaluation comments have been fairly applied by internal staff to ensure integrity and transparency are applied as per TCHC’s protocols.
• Establish and maintain effective relationships with internal TCHC business units to ensure VCO processes and procedures are aligned and effectively monitor and evaluate vendor compliance with TCHC contract obligations, policy requirements and business unit expectations
• Establish and maintain effective relationships and partnerships with TCHC vendors supporting all inquiries relating to the vendor’s performance evaluation
• Review and analyze completed vendor Performance Scorecard evaluations and lead follow-up discussions with the business units and TCHC vendors for any failed categories within the Performance Scorecard, documenting action plans with completion dates and opportunities for improvement
• Responsible for monitoring contract participation under the Design and Engineering (D&E) business unit and following-up with those vendors that decide not to participate
• Facilitate vendor disciplinary discussions in situations where vendor performance remains unsatisfactory concerning contract expectations
• Continuously review vendor performance to help mitigate TCHC risk and financial loss by ensuring vendor compliance to Performance Scorecard categories, especially where vendors are scoring close to the failure score
• Serve as VCO liaison between TCHC business units and Strategic Procurement during vendor roster refresh and other sourcing activities promptly providing vendor evaluation results, as required
• Collaborate with Legal Services, Strategic Procurement sourcing staff and business unit staff to ensure RFX documents and contracts are reflective of the language on the performance evaluation criteria, scoring models, SOPs, internal and external processes
• Facilitate discussions to educate business units on VCO performance evaluation framework, processes and documentation
• Facilitate discussions to educate new and existing TCHC vendors on the VCO performance evaluation process, scoring model, reward and consequences, acting as a point-of-contact for any vendor questions or follow-ups
• Ensure VCO performance evaluation processes and Performance Scorecards are reflective of the current needs of the business unit, update documentation as required
• Manage and monitor various Proxy Mailboxes to support VCO performance evaluations
• Create and refine various SOPs, process diagrams, policy documents, briefing notes, strategy documents, toolkits, guidelines and related VCO specific documentation, where necessary
• Work closely with resources, including Interns and temporary staff, assigned

VCO Software Platform

• Support and maintain the VCO software platform (“tool”) utilized for Vendor Management and Vendor Compliance functions
• Strong technical acumen with the ability to troubleshoot incidents raised by VCO tool end-users, engaging Vendor as necessary; leading incidents from start through to successful closure and resolution
• Subject Matter Expert (SME) and ‘go-to’ VCO representative for business units on the VCO tool to support Vendor Management, Vendor Compliance and Strategic Procurement needs and for any technical incidents
• Configure and update Performance Scorecard templates, Dashboards, Reports and KPIs in the VCO tool to meet TCHC business unit objectives
• Generate standard and ad-hoc reporting on vendor performance to support business unit and VCO decisions to assess individual vendor performance, roster health and program health
• Provide end-user training, facilitate demonstrations, create job aids, SOPs and other documentation for internal stakeholders in support of the VCO tool
• Provide training to vendors, as needed, on the VCO tool
• Liaison that supports the troubleshooting of technical incidents related to the VCO tool, engaging the vendor as needed and leading incidents to closure, including providing follow-ups to business units and VCO team
• Facilitate discussions with business unit stakeholders and VCO tool technical solution provider for new features and enhancement requests, documenting requirements and gathering the necessary quotations
• Validate and test application upgrades and enhancements to ensure no negative impact on VCO tool functionality
• Establish and maintain a collaborative partnership with VCO tool technical solution provider and participate in user group discussions, representing TCHC VCO as needed
• Work closely with TCHC ITS and VCO tool technical solution provider to ensure VCO tool is in continuous compliance with TCHC IT Security and IT Infrastructure policies and procedures of the VCO to familiarize on VCO performance evaluation framework, processes, Performance Scorecards, documentation and other information to support their role

Reporting and Analysis

• Demonstrate out-of-the-box thinking with strong analysis and investigative background to tackle each incident with integrity and honesty
• Ability to complete detailed analysis and problem statement reports based on confidential investigation and review of contracts, agreements, terms and conditions, the scope of work, discussions with project stakeholders/business units and correspondence (email, written or otherwise) relating to business unit and vendor escalations
• Complete review and analysis of budgets, contracts, change orders and invoices
• Carefully, efficiently and accurately generate reports on past vendor performance identifying trends, KPIs and flagging scorecard categories of concern
• Continuously monitor and track D&E vendor roster for repeated refusal of work
• Create ad-hoc reports as requested by executive and business units to support decisions
• Generate annual reports that outline the overall achievements of the VCO team
• Develop other reports as needed to support TCHC business units and the VCO