Course overview

"A supply chain is only as strong as its weakest link" - but what if you could strengthen every link?

In today's outsourced, globalised economy, supplier failure can devastate your business overnight. This course will transform how you think about supply chain risk - moving from defensive damage control to strategic partnership that drives innovation, efficiency and competitive advantage.

Key topics covered include:

Turn risk into opportunity: Learn how to convert potential suppliers from liability to asset. Master the art of collaboration that transforms vendors into strategic partners who actively contribute to your risk management strategy and fuel future growth through innovation and efficiencies.

Robust supplier relationships: Discover why the strongest supply chains are built on partnership, collaboration and teamwork. You’ll develop practical tools for due diligence, strategic evaluation and adopting a collaborative approach for both problem-solving and realising opportunities, creating win-win outcomes.

Master proactive risk management: This course equips you with frameworks to identify, assess and mitigate risks before they impact your business. You'll learn to spot the three critical risk sources: buyer-created risks, external market factors and supplier-specific vulnerabilities.

Prepare for the worst, plan for the best: From business continuity planning to exit strategies, you'll leave with comprehensive frameworks for managing everything from minor disruptions to catastrophic supplier failure. Learn when to fight, when to partner and when to walk away.

During this high-interactive course, the expert trainer focusses on best practice for success but also looks at how to plan and mitigate for the worst. Proactive management of supply chain risk means being prewarned and therefore pre-armed.

This course is part of our Commercial Management training courses series which aims to help individuals gain confidence in a range of areas surrounding contract law, and broader business management knowledge.

Benefits of attending

By attending this course, you will:

Understand the risks and rewards involved in subcontracting
Appreciate the interdependent nature of the relationship
Learn about strategic supplier assessment and due diligence frameworks
Evaluate the best strategies to undertake a vulnerability assessment
Improve your relationship management techniques and turn suppliers into allies
Learn how to convert a buyer’s aspiration into a supplier’s legal obligation
Grasp the benefits of having a meaningful performance review criterion
Improve collaboration for the realisation of business opportunities
Ensure alignment between liability and your organisation’s risk appetite
Master identifying and mitigating potential supply chain risks

Who should attend?

This course has been specifically designed for all those who manage stakeholders in a supply chain, including:

Contract managers
Commercial managers
Supply chain engineers
Procurement managers
Project managers
Operations team members
Business development managers
Contract administrators, officers and specialists

This course is ideal for anyone whose success depends on external suppliers and for those who want to move beyond basic supplier management to strategic supply chain optimisation.

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Enrol/reserve

This course will cover:

Day 1
Day 2

Benefits of managing Supply Chain Risk (SCR)

Why subcontract: Porter’s value chain
- Pro v Cons of subcontracting / outsourcing
- Loss of control v expertise / efficiencies
Creating a platform to support suppliers to achieve success
- Being prepared for challenges / potential risks – pre-warned = pre-armed
- Minimising criticality / impact of SCRs
Exercise – Porter’s value chain evaluation

Causes and types of supply chain risk

Operational
Strategic / relationship
Legal and reputational
Contractual / misunderstanding / miscommunications
Offshore sourcing / globalisation
Identifying origins of SCR
- Within supplier’s organisation / industry sector
- Within buyer’s organisation / industry sector
- Within the wider macro environment, STEEPLED / PESTEL
Framework for identifying potential SCRs
Cause of SCR not just impact - “Treat the cause not the effect” (Edward Bach)
'Root cause analysis’
- Common examples of root causes: flawed sourcing strategy; poor vendor selection / incapably supplier selected / single source; poor specification; inadequate demand / supply planning process; natural / manmade disaster; poor internal controls / cultural differences; market conditions etc
Exercise – 5 Why’s

Eliminating, avoiding and mitigating against supply chain risk

Four step approach:
- Step 1: Understanding internal need - needs analysis. Stakeholder engagement
- Step 2: Identifying best strategy to adopt: make / buy plan, new design or commercial off the shelf
- Step 3: Undertake thorough and comprehensive due diligence. Supplier evaluation and selection
  - Independent sources providing insights
  - Requests for Information (RFI), Invitation to Tender (ITT), Request for Quotation (RFQ)
  - Internal tendering governance - preventing potential of correction and fraud
  - Carter’s 10C’s approach
- Step 4: Ensure proposed express term contract adds value in SCR management by providing clarity of obligations and liabilities, combined with a realistic approach to their allocation. Effective and practical governance
  - Promise clauses – clear, consistent allocation of responsibility. Measurable, achievable
  - Procedure (governance) clauses – transparency, control, practical
  - Liability / Consequences clauses – clear allocation of liabilities (exclusions, disclaimers, indemnities, caveats and assumptions), especially fitness for purpose (conformance specification v performance specification). Practical consequences, solutions not solely monetary compensation
Aligning Express Terms to own organisations’ risk appetite
Appreciating restrictions on re-allocation of liability in statute (Unfair Contract Terms Act) but reflecting:
- Bargaining position (Porter’s 5 forces / Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BANTA) and Best Realistic Alternative (BRA)
- Strategic / objectives (Relationship v Task)
Structuring contractual relationship to support governance and collaboration. Supply Chain Management (SCM) AND Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) - ‘Strategic’ not ‘Reactive’ approaches
Encouraging feedback on performance to create opportunity for improvements / efficiencies
Exercise – Needs analysis scoping and red team / peer review
Exercise – Carter’s 10C’s
Exercise – Drafting Performance Specification KPIs
Exercise – Review of express term indemnity, disclaimer and exclusion clauses

Minimising criticality / pro-active management of supply chain risks

Does party allocated liability / SCR have capability / capacity to manage it?
Does party holding liability / SCR appreciate they hold the risk and what it entails to pro-actively manage / resource it?
Evaluating all identified potential SCRs on the supplier and undertake a vulnerability assessment of supplier to determine best approach
Determining criticality of potential risk: Probability (vulnerability) v Impact (financial / time / reputation)
Different approaches to SCR management planning – 4Ts: Tolerate, Transfer, Terminate, Treat
Identifying remedy, contingency plan for optimum outcome for buyer
Incorporating pre-agreeing remedy / contingency plan into contract express terms:
- Monetary compensation v a practical solution / remedy / Plan B
- Monetary compensation alone is desirable based on ease of sourcing alternative supplier within project timeframe
- Amount and type of monetary compensation – direct, indirect / consequential, limited or unlimited
- How to realise monetary compensation / remedy without going to court
- Added protection of insurance
- Option to terminate or not in event of breach
Crisis management process:
Pros and cons of a Business Contingency Plan (BCP)
BCP v Disaster Recovery Planning (DRP)
Force Majeure options
Exit strategy – contract termination and supplier transition planning, especially intellectual property rights

Putting SCM in place to manage SCR

Timing to agree express terms and ‘Plan B’s’
Good governance - Drucker – ‘if it cannot be measured, it cannot be managed’
Gathering meaningful performance information to enable early warning
Streamlining supplier data gathered for meaningful insights / to enable comparisons
Ensure easy means to collect performance information. Technology to collect and analyse
Different types of controls:
- Preventative controls
- Directive controls
- Detective controls
- Corrective controls
‘Carrot verses stick’ approaches
Action Plan approach to capture any misunderstands between stakeholders
SERVQUAL ‘service gaps’ – Gap, Explanation, Remedy
Flexible project management approach. Agile v waterfall project management styles
Exercise – Evaluating criticality of a potential risk, Traffic Light Analysis
Exercise – 4 T’s ‘Treating’ a risk, solution not problem
Exercise – Carrot v stick approaches

Embedding SCR management into corporate culture

Risk evaluation as a continuous process, managing challenges plus seizing opportunities
Creating a risk awareness culture
- Evaluating organisation’s present attitude to risk
  - Compliance
  - Hazard management
  - Control management
  - Opportunity management
- Formulating risk management policies and procedures
- Reporting of risk events, line manager responsibilities
- Capturing information on hazards, vulnerabilities and risks
Using information to make improvements / lessons learnt
- Quality Management System (QMS)
- Total Quality Management (TQM) v Quality Assurance (QA)
- Six Sigma (Define, measure, analysis, improve, control)
- Deming’s PDCA (plan, do, check, act)
Exercise – PDCA

Enrol/reserve

Catherine Hurst
Hurst Consulting and Training Limited

Catherine Hurst BSc(Hons), CIMDip, PgDL, is an independent consultant in the contract and commercial fields. She was formerly a Commercial Manager at BAe Systems, following previous contract/commercial roles with GEC and Siemens. She has extensive practical experience of bid management, contract drafting and negotiation, contract and subcontract management as well as commercial risk management, both with UK and overseas customers and suppliers, in the private and public sectors.

She is a highly experienced trainer, having a style which brings a subject to life, creating interest and stimulating the enthusiasm of delegates. She combines academic best practice with real world experience.

She lecturers Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (CIPS) diploma, levels 4, 5 & 6 at Chichester college. As well as being a member of CIPS, Catherine has a degree in Management Studies, a Chartered Institute of Marketing diploma and more recently achieved a distinction in her Common Professional Examination (CPE)/Post-grad diploma in law, winning the prize for the highest achieving student in the contract law module.

Catherine has successfully provided training to organisations across a wide variety of industries, including:

Transport / utilities / energy / construction / engineering / IT / telecons: Network Rail, ScotRail, Balfour Beatty, London Underground, Westinghouse Springfields Fuels, General Dynamics, Siemens, Metronet, Thales, ABB, Hitachi, Jungheinrich, Honeywell, PALL Europe, Senior Aerospace BWT, RES (Renewable Energy Systems), AGI, Silvertown, QinetiQ, Clyde Pumps / Weir Pumps, Scottish Power, NCOC (North Caspian Operating Company), Computacentre, CISCO, BT, United Utilities

Health / pharmaceutical / education: Nuffield Health, Surrey PCT, Bristol Myers-Squibb, Newcastle University, Exeter University

Public: Forensic Science Services, Office for National Statistics, DARA (Defence Aviation Repair Agency), Metropolitan Police

Charity: Phoenix Futures, Homegroup

Retail: Co-op

More details

NEW higher discounts for multiple bookings - bring your colleagues to make your training budget go further:

30% off the 2nd delegate*
40% off the 3rd delegate*
50% off the 4th delegate*

Please contact us for pricing if you are interested in booking 5 or more delegates

8-9 June 2026

Live online

09:00-17:00 UK (London) (UTC+01)
10:00-18:00 Paris (UTC+02)
04:00-12:00 New York (UTC-04)
Course code 16096

GBP 999 1,199
EUR 1,399 1,679
USD 1,607 1,919

Until 04 May

2 days live online training
Browser-based, no download usually required
See presenters and interact with fellow attendees
Download documentation and certification of completion
Fair transfer and cancellation policy

View basket

Not ready to book yet?

for 7 days, no obligation

10-11 December 2026

Live online

09:00-17:00 UK (London) (UTC+00)
10:00-18:00 Paris (UTC+01)
04:00-12:00 New York (UTC-05)
Course code 16440

GBP 999 1,199
EUR 1,399 1,679
USD 1,607 1,919

Until 05 Nov

2 days live online training
Browser-based, no download usually required
See presenters and interact with fellow attendees
Download documentation and certification of completion
Fair transfer and cancellation policy

View basket

Not ready to book yet?

for 7 days, no obligation

* Early booking discounts may not be combined with other discounts or offers. As such, the discounts for 2nd/3rd/4th delegates are based on the full price; and apply only when booking multiple delegates on the same date.

Previous customers

United Kingdom

Dematic Limited
The University of Birmingham
The University of Birmingham

Saudi Arabia

LFSH

Enrol/reserve

Run Strategic Supply Chain Risk Management: From Vulnerability to Resilience Live online for your team

2 days

Typical duration

Pricing from:

GBP 800

Per attendee, based on 10 attendees
Course tailored to your requirements
At your choice of location, or online

Contact us

We can customise this course to your requirements and deliver it on an in-house basis for any number of your staff or colleagues.

Contact our in-house training experts Aleksandra Beer and Yesim Nurko to discuss your requirements:

Strategic Supply Chain Risk Management: From Vulnerability to Resilience Training Course