Short answer: review vendors on four fixed rhythms. Hold a 15 minute weekly dispatch huddle, a 60 minute monthly operations review, a quarterly business review (QBR) with each Tier 1 vendor, and an annual renewal review before the contract's notice deadline. Give each meeting its own decision rights. The huddle can reassign jobs, the monthly review can issue warnings, the QBR can set probation, and the annual review decides renewal, rates or exit.
Ask an operations manager when vendors get reviewed and the honest answer is often "when something goes wrong". The HVAC contractor gets a meeting after a third missed emergency in a month. The cleaning company gets a call after a complaint reaches the owner. Meanwhile the elevator contractor has slipped from 96% to 81% on time for monthly inspections, and nobody says a word, because nothing has broken yet.
A vendor scorecard tells you what to measure. It does not tell you when anyone looks at the numbers, who is in the room, or what that room is allowed to decide. That is the job of a review cadence. This guide sets out the four meetings, who attends, what each may decide, how to tier vendors so the calendar stays manageable, and how to start in your first quarter.
The four meetings at a glance
| Meeting | How often and how long | Who attends | What it may decide |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly dispatch huddle | Weekly, 15 minutes, same slot | Maintenance coordinator and property managers. No vendors. | Reassign a work order, escalate a breach, ask a vendor to call about a specific job |
| Monthly operations review | Monthly, 60 minutes | Operations manager, coordinator, property accountant, property managers. A vendor by exception. | Issue a formal warning, claim an SLA credit, require a corrective action plan, add a vendor to the QBR agenda |
| Quarterly business review | Quarterly, 60 minutes per Tier 1 vendor | Operations director and manager, the vendor's account manager and operations lead, accounts or procurement for commercial items | Place on probation with exit criteria, change scope, hear a rate review request, lift probation, recommend non renewal |
| Annual renewal review | Yearly, 45 to 90 minutes, before the notice deadline | Operations director, budget holder or asset manager, procurement. The vendor joins for the second half. | Renew, renew on new terms or rates, rebid the trade, not renew, terminate on the contract's terms |
Why a fixed cadence beats reviews after incidents
A falling number turns into a decision when three things happen. Someone looks at it on a set date. That person is senior enough to act. And the meeting is allowed to take the action. Reviews held after an incident miss all three. The look happens late, the person looking is whoever the problem landed on, and the action is made up on the spot.
A calendar fixes the first two. Decision rights fix the third. Each meeting gets specific powers and no others, the way a board committee does. The weekly huddle can move a work order but cannot warn a vendor. The monthly review can warn but cannot set probation. The QBR can set probation but cannot terminate. So decisions get made where there is enough evidence to make them, and nobody fires a contractor on a Friday afternoon because a meeting got heated.
Vendors change too. Once they know the date of the next review and what it will look at, the QBR becomes a deadline their own managers work toward. Some even start asking for the scorecard in advance.
What each meeting reads
Weekly huddle. Open work orders by vendor and age, this week's SLA breaches, emergency and urgent jobs, and any vendor capacity warnings. Output: an updated job list and an escalation log.
Monthly review. The scorecard for every Tier 1 and Tier 2 vendor, SLA compliance and credits due, invoice rejection rates, insurance certificates expiring in the next 60 days, and escalations from the huddles. Output: warning letters, credit claims and a corrective action register.
QBR. Three months of scorecard trend, SLA results and credits, root causes of repeat problems, upcoming projects and seasonal load, insurance status and open commercial items. Output: minutes with actions, owners and dates.
Annual review. Twelve months of scorecard data, total spend against budget, credit history, how hard the vendor would be to replace, recent market bids and the renewal deadline. Output: a renewal decision recorded in the vendor file, with notice served if needed.
Two timing points matter. A warning from the monthly review should be a formal letter filed in the vendor record, because an email thread is hard to rely on later. And the annual review follows the contract's renewal date, whatever your financial year. If the contract needs 60 or 90 days' notice of non renewal, the review must finish before that date, or its decision cannot be acted on.
Back to the elevator contractor. Under this cadence, the second monthly review would have flagged the drop. The third would have issued a warning. The QBR would have set probation with a clear target, such as 95% on time inspections for the next quarter. Nobody needs to be angry for any of that to happen.
The QBR agenda
Use the same seven items every quarter, in the same order. Send the scorecard to the vendor seven days before. A QBR where the vendor sees the data for the first time turns into an argument about the numbers.
- Scorecard trend (10 minutes). This quarter against the last two and the target. Talk about the trend. Leave single jobs to the weekly huddle.
- SLA results and credits (10 minutes). Breaches by priority, credits claimed and agreed, open disputes. This item is about money and contract terms, so it needs decisions. If your contracts do not define response clocks yet, start with a vendor SLA.
- Repeat issues and root causes (15 minutes). The three most common job types and the two most common breach causes. This is often the most useful item for both sides. It is where you learn that the late urgent jobs all happen at one site with a broken key safe.
- Upcoming work and capacity (10 minutes). Seasonal load, planned projects, properties joining or leaving, and any subcontracting the vendor plans.
- Insurance and compliance (5 minutes). Certificates and licences expiring next quarter, safety incidents and near misses, changes in ownership or key staff.
- Commercial items (5 minutes). Rate requests from either side, scope changes, invoice accuracy, and your own payment performance. A vendor asked to restore service in four hours can fairly ask why its invoices take 52 days to pay.
- Decisions and actions (5 minutes). Any decision the QBR is allowed to make, plus every action with an owner and a date. Send minutes within two working days and file them in the vendor record.
Tier vendors by spend and criticality
A portfolio with 140 vendors cannot hold 140 QBRs. Tier them on two measures: annual spend, which is how much money is at stake, and criticality, which is what happens to the building if the vendor fails. High spend does not always mean critical, as with a painting contractor. Critical does not always mean high spend, as with a $9,000 a year fire alarm monitoring contract.
| Critical (life safety, statutory, single source, or failure stops the building: elevators, fire systems, security, 24/7 emergency trades) | Important (failure hurts service within days: general HVAC, plumbing, electrical, cleaning) | Routine (failure is an inconvenience: painting, carpet, signage, occasional handymen) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High spend (for example, top 20% by spend or over $100,000 a year) | Tier 1: all four meetings | Tier 1: all four meetings | Tier 2: weekly, monthly, annual |
| Medium spend | Tier 1: all four meetings | Tier 2: weekly, monthly, annual | Tier 3: annual letter, scorecard on request |
| Low spend | Tier 2, with a standing item on how to replace them | Tier 3: annual letter | Tier 3: reviewed if a huddle escalates them |
Two rules keep this honest. Criticality wins: a low spend fire alarm contract never sits in Tier 3, because the vendor you cannot replace is the one that hurts most when it fails. And tiers change at the annual review, so one bad week with a vendor never moves it.
What the cadence costs
Take an operator with 140 vendors across 30 properties, tiered as 8 in Tier 1, 22 in Tier 2 and 110 in Tier 3. These figures are illustrative.
- Weekly huddle: 15 minutes x 50 weeks = 12.5 hours
- Monthly review: 60 minutes x 12 = 12 hours
- QBRs: 60 minutes x 4 quarters x 8 vendors = 32 hours
- Annual reviews: 45 minutes x 30 Tier 1 and Tier 2 vendors = 22.5 hours
- Tier 3 annual letters, prepared in one batch: about 4 hours
Total: about 83 hours a year. Replacing one failed elevator contractor at short notice can easily take more time than that. The number grows with the size of Tier 1, so set the Tier 1 threshold on purpose. Eight QBR vendors is a workable calendar. Twenty is hard to sustain.
Decision rights and the escalation path
Decision rights turn the cadence into a control. A decision above a meeting's level goes to the next meeting, or is triggered outside the cycle by a for cause event under the contract.
| Decision | Weekly | Monthly | QBR | Annual | For cause event |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reassign or speed up a work order | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Escalate a vendor to the next meeting | Yes | Yes | Yes | n/a | n/a |
| Issue a formal written warning | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Claim an SLA credit | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Require a corrective action plan | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Place on probation (one quarter, measurable exit criteria) | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Change scope | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Agree a rate change | No | No | Hear request | Yes | No |
| Rebid the trade | No | No | Recommend | Yes | Yes |
| Renew or not renew | No | No | Recommend | Yes | n/a |
| Terminate for convenience | No | No | No | Yes | n/a |
| Terminate for cause | No | No | No | No | Yes, through the contract's breach and cure process |
Read the escalation path down the table. A missed emergency at the huddle goes on the monthly agenda. Three in a month earn a formal warning. A warning with no improvement by the next monthly review becomes a QBR item, and the QBR can set probation with a target such as 95% emergency compliance next quarter. Missing the target leads to a recommendation not to renew, which the annual review decides with the budget holder present and a replacement bid in hand. Termination for cause follows the contract's breach and cure steps, set out in our guide to terminating a maintenance vendor.
This protects both sides. A team that wants to drop a vendor has to build the evidence first, and that file is exactly what a for cause exit needs. A vendor that met its probation target has a record that says so.
A probation notice that holds up
When the QBR sets probation, put it in writing the same week. A clear notice gives the vendor a fair chance to fix the problem and gives you a clean record if it does not. Keep it to one page with five parts:
- The facts. The measure, the target in the contract and the actual result, with dates. For example: "Emergency response within 4 hours: target 95%, actual 78% (July to September)."
- The history. The date of the formal warning and the corrective action plan that followed.
- The exit criteria. One or two measurable targets and the period. For example: "95% or better on emergency response, measured monthly from 1 October to 31 December."
- What happens next. If the targets are met, probation ends at the next QBR. If not, the QBR will recommend non renewal to the annual review, or you may act under the contract's breach and cure terms.
- Support and contacts. Who the vendor should talk to, and any changes you will make on your side, such as fixing site access problems.
Ask the vendor to confirm receipt. File the notice and the confirmation in the vendor record. Check the wording against your contract, and with counsel if termination is a real possibility.
Starting the cadence in your first quarter
You do not need a perfect scorecard to begin. Start with the data you have and improve it as you go.
- Week 1: book the weekly huddle, the monthly review and the QBR slots for the next four quarters.
- Week 2: tier your vendors with the matrix above. Expect to move a few later.
- Week 3: list every contract renewal date and notice deadline, and work back to set annual review dates.
- Weeks 4 to 6: run the first monthly review with whatever data you have. Note which numbers were hard to get.
- Weeks 7 to 12: send the first QBR pre reads seven days ahead and hold the first QBRs.
Run the reviews from the system
Every input in these meetings comes from records you already keep: work orders with timestamps, SLA clocks, invoices and rejections, insurance expiry dates and spend by vendor. When those records live in one system, the huddle is a filtered list, the monthly scorecard is a saved report, and the QBR pre read is the same report for one vendor over three months. When they live in spreadsheets and inboxes, the cadence tends to stall by the second month, because building the pack takes longer than the meeting.
In RIOO, work orders are created, prioritized and assigned to technicians or vendors, and tracked to completion in the same NetSuite account that holds the ledger. Vendor management and accounts payable keeps each vendor's profile, bills and payment history, which is where the spend and invoice accuracy figures for the QBR and annual review come from.
Frequently asked questions
How often should you review vendor performance?
On four rhythms: a weekly huddle for this week's jobs, a monthly review of every scorecard, a QBR with each Tier 1 vendor, and an annual review before the contract's notice deadline.
What should a vendor QBR agenda include?
Scorecard trend, SLA results and credits, repeat issues and root causes, upcoming work and capacity, insurance and compliance, commercial items including your payment performance, and decisions and actions with owners and dates.
Who should attend a vendor review meeting?
It depends on the meeting. The huddle is the coordinator and property managers. The monthly review adds the operations manager and property accountant. The QBR includes the vendor's account manager. The annual review adds the budget holder, because it is the meeting that can change rates, renew or terminate.
Which vendors need a QBR?
Tier 1 vendors: critical vendors with medium or high spend, and high spend vendors in important trades such as HVAC or plumbing. Tier 2 vendors get the monthly scorecard and an annual review. Tier 3 vendors get an annual letter and are reviewed if escalated.
When should a vendor be placed on probation?
After a formal warning and a corrective action plan have not fixed the problem. The QBR sets probation for one quarter with measurable exit criteria, confirmed in a written notice.
Figures in the examples are illustrative planning numbers.
