Meetings Manager

Position Overview

The Meetings Manager provides organizational oversight of hotel and hospitality contracts supporting many of Kiewit’s meetings. This role is responsible for strategic sourcing, contract negotiation, financial governance, and risk mitigation related to meeting venues and related vendors.

This Shared Service role establishes standards, negotiates enterprise-level agreements, ensures compliance with company policies, builds industry relationships and protects the organization from contractual and financial risk.

At Kiewit, the scale of our operations is huge. Our construction and engineering projects span across the United States, Canada and Mexico, improving and connecting communities with every initiative.  We depend on our high-performing operations support professionals — they’re the glue that holds multiple areas of the business together and the catalysts that make things happen. We hire only the most driven people and we offer them diverse career opportunities, strong leadership and mentorship, rewarding, collaborative work, and responsibility they won’t find just anywhere. We’re always pushing new limits. You can too.

District Overview

HR Operations is an integral partner and service provider at Kiewit. In recent years, we have gone from decentralized HR groups to a unified, shared service team, with various HR Centers of Excellence. Our vision is to be a best-in-class international HR organization.

Location

This role is located in Omaha, NE at our downtown headquarters office. This role requires regular in office attendance and travel up to 30% of the time. 

Responsibilities

Contract Negotiation & Governance

• Work with meeting planners across the organization to understand their meeting needs and forecast contracting needs.
• Review, negotiate, and execute hotel and hospitality vendor contracts, including attrition, cancellation, force majeure, indemnification, and liability provisions.
• Establish and maintain standardized contract language and negotiation frameworks.
• Manage the full contract lifecycle, including renewals, amendments, and compliance monitoring.
• Partner with Legal, Procurement, and other internal partners to ensure alignment with company standards.

Strategic Sourcing & Vendor Management

• Manages mass negotiation and site selection for district meetings venues.

• Evaluate and negotiate vendor proposals for pricing, contractual risk, and service standards, with vendors such as Cvent and national audio-visual contracts.
• Familiar with and uses the Cvent platform for all sourcing.
• Build and maintain strategic relationships with key hotel and vendor partners.
• Conduct site evaluations and due diligence as needed.
• Knowledge expert of hotels in key cities and performs site visits as needed.
• Conduct quarterly and annual business reviews with key hotel partners and vendors to monitor spend, need and trends.
• Attend industry training as needed.

Risk Management & Compliance

• Identify contractual and financial risks and implement mitigation strategies.
• Ensure adherence to company procurement policies and meeting guidelines.

Financial & Spend Oversight

• Analyze meeting-related spend, contract materialization, and vendor performance.
• Track cost savings and cost avoidance from negotiated agreements.
• Support budgeting and forecasting efforts related to meeting spend.
• Prepares and maintains historical and future metrics/information (e.g., room blocks, transportation costs, budgets, contacts, etc.)
• Provide reporting and recommendations to HR leadership.

Continuous Improvement

• Apply real-time industry trend insights to optimize meeting strategy, cost control, and attendee engagement

Qualifications

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Hospitality, or related field.
• Hospitality industry experience preferred.
• Strong relationship builder with hotels and vendor partners.
• 5+ years of experience in hospitality contract negotiation, strategic sourcing, procurement, or vendor management.
• Strong experience using Cvent.
• Demonstrated expertise negotiating hotel contracts and managing risk exposure.
• Strong analytical, financial, and contract review skills. #LI-AK1