One of the most significant changes introduced by the Procurement Act 2023 concerns what happens after the contract has been awarded**.

Traditionally, supplier performance has largely been regarded as an internal matter between the contracting authority and its supplier.

That assumption needs reconsidering.

Section 71 of the Procurement Act introduces Contract Performance Notices. These can record performance against Key Performance Indicators and information concerning certain breaches or failures to perform.

Importantly, the information is published on the central digital platform.

This means contract performance has become considerably more visible.

For contracts where the statutory KPI requirements apply, authorities must assess supplier performance against the relevant KPIs at least once every twelve months and on termination and publish the required information.

That has an important consequence for contract managers.

The quality of the performance regime designed before contract award matters more than ever.

Consider a badly drafted KPI.

Perhaps the KPI:

• measures activity rather than outcomes;
• contains an ambiguous definition;
• relies upon unreliable data;
• fails to identify exclusions;
• contains an unrealistic target; or
• can easily be manipulated by the supplier.

Historically, these weaknesses might have resulted primarily in arguments during monthly performance meetings.

Now there may be wider consequences.

The authority may eventually have to make and publish an assessment based upon the performance framework it established.

There is another important dimension.

Government guidance explains that Contract Performance Notices provide other contracting authorities with an objective source of information relevant to the discretionary exclusion ground concerning breach of contract and poor performance.

Contract management therefore cannot simply begin once somebody hands the signed contract to the contract manager.

Effective contract management needs to be designed during procurement

Procurement and contract-management teams should jointly consider:

Outcomes → KPIs → SLAs → Evidence → Reporting → Governance → Escalation → Remedies → Publication**

The Procurement Act is helping to move public procurement towards a genuinely end-to-end commercial lifecycle.

For contract managers, that makes the post-award phase more visible and potentially more consequential than before.

DPSS Training

DPSS’s Designing Contract Performance Management Regimes under the Procurement Act course 15 – 16 December 2026 examines how organisations can develop proportionate and effective KPIs, SLAs, reporting arrangements, governance structures and supplier-performance mechanisms.

The objective is simple:

Design the performance regime properly before you have to manage it.