Support for those new to managing contracts or new in role as a contract manager
Updated 13 August 2026
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More and more different types of public sector organisations are starting to proactively manage external suppliers and contractors.
If you are newly into a role managing public sector contracts and suppliers, there are a number of resources, guidance, support, and training & development opportunities available to you as you develop in your role. These will help to broaden your knowledge and develop your skills.
Scope of your role
It is likely that your role will include:
- Taking responsibility for managing contracts within your organisation
- Adopting good practice for managing suppliers post-procurement
- Managing supplier service delivery
- Managing and mitigating risk
- Ensuring compliance with your organisation’s governance criteria
- Ensuring value for money
- Ensuring suppliers conform to contractual terms, service level agreements (‘SLAs’) and key performance indicators (‘KPIs’)KPIs.
The Government Functional Standard (Gov008) supported by the Commercial Continuous Improvement Framework provide guidance on the scope of contract management.
Benchmark for the skills and attributes needed
An ideal starting place is the Contract Management Professional Standards which sets out the behaviours, technical skills and enabling skills to which every good contract manager should align themselves.
Guidance on operational good practice
Seek out your organisation’s contract management policy, and guidance such as any strategy, toolkit or tiering guide. Or, how managing contracts fits into the wider commercial strategy/plan.
Then, here are some useful guides and resources to help you.
Sector good practice: there are two comprehensive good practice guides available:
- Contract Management Playbook - a guide on contracting with a focus on the organisation
- Best practice for contract management - a more established guide with a focus on the individual
- As a sister guide to the good practice, the National Audit Office has produced the Commercial and contract management: insights and emerging best practice
Tiering your contracts: there is a contract tiering guide available from the Contract Management Capability Programme
Managing risk and contract assurance: there is a Managing contract risk and assurance guide also available from the Contract Management Capability Programme.
Training and accreditation
Two fundamental resources can be accessed via Government Commercial College - an online learning and development platform.
The Foundation (PDF, 345KB) accreditation is a baseline accreditation for the sector, with six e-learning modules covering: contract design, procurement & mobilisation, managing contract delivery, change control, stakeholder engagement, and managing risk.
The accreditation is centrally funded so it comes at no cost to you or your organisation, and is needed as a base to progress to Practitioner (operational level) or Expert (strategic level) accreditations.
The Beyond Foundation (PDF, 3.51MB) development programme is a ‘dip in, dip out’ series of nine stand-alone videos lasting around 60 minutes each, covering: design & ongoing development, procurement, mobilisation, contract delivery, finance, performance management, change management, exit & transition, stakeholder engagement, risk management.
Other resources
A useful presentation from the Contract Management Capability Programme’s Learning & Development Team on “What does a good contract manager look like, and what do they do?” (PDF, 2.34MB) provides a focus on skills.
The Contract Management Capability Programme also champions good practice and offers some wider resources that will be particularly helpful to new contract managers. This guide (PDF, 372KB provides some details.
The Contract Management Community of Practice is a cross-sector network providing resources, forum, monthly good practice workshop, and activities for contract managers.
The Central government and wider public sector contract management network platform is a resource with good practice advice, updates, topical items and content, articles, webinar presentations store, and information on training & development opportunities.
The Contract Management Capability Programme also provides a monthly Bulletin update and a comprehensive programme of fortnightly webinars (free of charge), each one lasting about 50 minutes. For more details of these, and how to access them, email richard.waft@cabinetoffice.gov.uk