Director, Category Management - Contract Labor Services

Director, Category Management- Contract Labor Services

 

The Opportunity 

• Director, Category Management- Contract Labor Services at a growth-oriented downstream energy company
• Drive enterprise value through innovative commercial strategies, including master service agreements, alliance partnerships, and performance based contracting models that strengthen supplier relationships, improve operational performance, and mitigate business risk.
• Lead the enterprise sourcing strategy for contract labor and field services, ensuring skilled craft availability, schedule certainty, contractor performance, and execution excellence in support of maintenance, turnarounds, and capital projects.
• Reporting to the VP, Procurement, this role provides enterprise leadership for the contract labor and field services category, establishing sourcing strategies and commercial partnerships that enable safe, reliable, and cost-effective operations across refineries, pipelines, and terminals.

 

Key activities include: 

Enterprise Category Strategy & Value Creation

• Develop and execute enterprise-wide category strategies across the contract labor and field services portfolio for refining, pipeline, and terminal operations.
• Identify and deliver value through master service agreements, alliance models, bundled service strategies, crew productivity improvement, scope optimization, total installed cost reduction, and commercial excellence.
• Lead complex multi-site RFx events, rate negotiations, contracting strategies, and commercial model transformation including time-and-materials, unit-rate, lump-sum, target-price, and performance-based agreements.
• Ensure category strategies support turnaround readiness, capital project execution, planned and emergency maintenance, regulatory inspections, and business continuity across all sites.

Leadership & Team Management

• Lead, coach, and develop Category Managers, Sourcing Specialists, Contract Administrators, and field services analysts.
• Establish clear goals, performance expectations, and talent development plans aligned to refining and midstream business priorities.
• Support a culture of safety leadership, accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Drive succession planning and organizational capability development for craft labor and field services sourcing.
• Prioritize team resources across turnarounds, capital projects, and run-and-maintain demand cycles.

Executive Stakeholder Engagement

• Partner with senior leaders across Refining Operations, Logistics, Capital Projects, Maintenance and Reliability, Turnarounds, HSE, Inspection, Engineering, Finance, Legal, and Risk.
• Present category strategies, contractor market intelligence, labor availability outlooks, and risk mitigation plans to executive leadership.
• Serve as executive sponsor for strategic contractor relationships and alliance partners.
• Influence cross-functional decisions related to contractor selection, contracting model, scope packaging, schedule, and site execution strategy.

Contractor & Supplier Relationship Management

• Lead executive governance with key contractors and service providers across the labor and field services portfolio.
• Implement contractor scorecards measuring safety performance (TRIR, leading indicators), schedule adherence, productivity, quality, cost, workforce qualifications, and ESG.
• Negotiate complex master service agreements, evergreen alliance contracts, turnaround execution contracts, performance-based agreements, and equipment rental frame agreements.
• Drive contractor accountability, continuous improvement, and pre-qualification compliance through the company’s contractor management and HSE qualification systems.

Risk Management & Business Continuity

• Own risk management strategies including multi-contractor coverage, regional and craft pool diversification, surge capacity planning, and labor availability contingency.
• Monitor craft labor market conditions, wage and benefit inflation, union and prevailing wage exposure, imm