Job Description

The National Distribution Centre

The National Distribution Centre (NDC) provides a critical logistics and supply chain service to all public sector prisons including the collection, storage and delivery of a wide range of products. Products stored and carried include goods from commercial suppliers, raw materials into workshops and a wide range of internally manufactured products. As part of the Ministry of Justice, the site also supports other front line delivered services where required.

The in-house NDC fleet is designed to operate on a specialised demount system which is largely governed by challenges that arise from physical vehicular access restrictions across the prison estate, necessitating a mix of vehicle types and heights. The fleet delivers to the public sector prison estate on a national 5 day working week basis, operating a single shift system, supported by nights out as and when required.

The current logistics and supply chain solution for prisons has been operating in much the same way for many years. Challenges including prison capacity increases, aging technology, limited space and sustainability pressures are all contributing to an environment where specific focus needs to be given to the future shape and scale of the logistics function, to deliver transformational change linked to the adoption of new technology and the efficiencies that can be delivered.

Commercial

The Logistics and Supply Chain function sits within the Commercial Directorate within the MoJ. The Ministry of Justice has one of the largest and most complex spending profiles in central government. Each year we spend more than £5 billion with our suppliers and it’s our job to help coordinate the sourcing of what we need. We support the management of our contracts across the department, its agencies and non‑departmental public bodies.

Commercial is responsible for coordinating procurement and contract management across the MoJ, its agencies and non-departmental public bodies. Commercial is organised into category teams, each with an interesting portfolio of contracts and diverse customers and suppliers to manage. We also have systems, programme management office, supplier relationship and risk management teams who work across all areas.

Role Summary

This is an administrative role, managing a team of people within the MoJ National Distribution Centre (NDC). The role is to lead and manage the logistics hub service provision and to support it and its staff in delivering an efficient and effective storage and distribution service to HMPPS and other stakeholders.

You will manage the administrative processes, staff and transactional activity of the logistics hub and Warehouse Management System (WMS) administration systems. Overseeing the management of logistics and stock control business processes, ensuring data integrity, and adhering to financial and audit principles, policies, and procedures. To lead by example and offer supportive management, empower team members to work independently.

Key Responsibilities

Manage the administrative processes and transactional activity of the logistics hub, WMS administration systems that support the work of the NDC and the wider directorate.

The job holder will be required to undertake the following duties and responsibilities:

• Manage the day-to-day activity and responsibilities of the Hub, ensuring that deadlines are met, and work is completed accurately, including management of the Logistics Hub functional mailboxes.

• Lead processes

• Continuous improvement

• Address organise and execute warehouse and distribution (logistics) support activities in order processing, customer service, inventory management, inbound goods booking, outbound goods, manifest planning, and vehicle routing.

• Provide leadership and day-to-day management and development of a small team. Have the necessary skills to apply all relevant HR policies and practices and be able to carry out all aspects of people management such as attendance, disciplinary investigations, performance management, staff one to one’s, and appraisals. Ensuring that work is assigned fairly, taking into consideration workloads and the knowledge and skills of individual team members.

• Act as main contact point for all communications to the team, prioritising urgent communications where necessary.

• Understand customers’ and other stakeholder needs, service those needs, and maintain and develop positive business relationships relevant to logistics and inventory control activities.

• Provide accurate and reliable business management information in support of the NDC and wider directorate performance targets. Provide professional and efficient administrative, organisational and information management support to the NDC leadership team.

• Collaborate with staff, other departments, senior leaders, and decision makers to share information, problem solve, and to clarify logistics related objectives. Provide support for any ad hoc work requested by the leadership team.

• Oversee the receipt, logging, and response to written requests regarding prisoner property, customer enquiries and complaints and service delivery failures ensuring correspondence is replied to within agreed timescales.

• Confer with other management, staff, and primary stakeholders to coordinate inventory management activities such as product conversion, inventory write-off, inventory consolidation and disposal.

• Contributing to the development of local policy, policies, and procedures. Attend regular meetings with primary stake holders (PIHQ) and feedback relevant information to team members.

• Prepare and distribute external communications in respect of foreseeable delivery schedule changes resulting from public and privilege holidays and the annual stocktake.

• Identify potential enhancements to WMS systems and procedures to deliver improvement changes to the NDC/logistics operation. Develop and deliver written and oral presentations in this respect.

• Support the Logistics Team Leader in developing a rolling program of stock checking based on pick frequency/product value or ensuring that each stock location is checked a minimum of twice per year.

The duties/responsibilities listed above describe the post as it is at present and is not intended to be exhaustive. The job holder is expected to accept reasonable alternations and additional tasks of a similar level that may be necessary.

Essential Criteria

• Must have knowledge and work-related experience in warehousing, distribution, and stock control.

• Must have supervisory experience in managing a small team, be able to conduct staff meetings and make presentations and interview potential staff members during the recruitment process.

• Must be able to deal effectively and assertively with staff. Provide clear and concise direction and instructions and establish a good working rapport with team members and primary stakeholders at all levels.

• Have good information collation and analysis skills and be able to investigate, understand and reconcile complex stock accounting and WMS transactional issues.

• Have a strong commitment to customer service and to be able to respond quickly to customer and staff complaints, able to handle pressure, have a sense of urgency, and attention to detail.

• Ability to think and respond quickly and adjust work schedules and operating plans in response to unplanned events.

Desirable Criteria

• Good working knowledge of Microsoft Outlook, Word, and Excel.

• Manage the achievement of performance delivery indicators and standards within the logistics office and wider NDC.

Application Stage

An initial sift will be performed against the following elements and will be assessed against the Civil Service success profiles framework:

Experience

• CV

• Statement of Suitability (up to 750 words): this should be based around your experience on the key responsibilities and essential criteria

Behaviours

We will assess your application on the following behaviours (250 words): Please use the STAR method in your examples.

• Managing a Quality Service

• Leadership

• Making effective decisions

Please note in the event of a large number of applications being received we may run the initial sift against CV, Statement of Suitability and lead behaviour of “Managing a Quality Service".

If shortlisted, you will be invited to an interview and will be assessed on the selected success profile elements at the interview stage.

Interview stage

There is one interview stage for this vacancy and as part of the interview process you will be required to provide evidence on the following, and will be assessed against the Civil Service success profiles framework:

Behaviours

• Working Together

• Delivering at Pace

• Changing and Improving

The interviews will be held at National Distribution Centre, Burton Road, Branston. DE14 3EG.  The site is shared with B&Q distribution, please follow the road signs for MoJ once entering the site and report to the security gate where you will be directed to the reception to sign in.  The interviews will be held on an Industrial Site and all staff and visitors are required to wear Hi-Vis Vests whilst moving around site; these will be provided by security on arrival, please ask for a vest if not offered one.

Strengths maybe assessed at the interview, and these are not shared in advance.

To learn more about the Civil Service success profiles framework and how they are assessed please click here.

Please use STAR approach to structure your examples for both the application and interview for behaviours. Using the STAR method can help you give examples of relevant experience that you have. It allows you to set the scene, show what you did, and how you did it, and explain the overall outcome.

Situation: Describe the situation you found yourself in. You must describe a specific event or situation. Be sure to give enough detail for the job holder to understand.

• Where are you?

• Who was there with you?

• What had happened?

Task: The job holder will want to understand what you tried to achieve from the situation you found yourself in.

• What was the task that you had to complete and why?

• What did you have to achieve?

Actions: What did you do? The job holder will be looking for information on what you did, how you did it and why. Keep the focus on you. What specific steps did you take and what was your contribution? Remember to include how you did it, and the behaviours you used. Try to use “I" rather than “we" to explain your actions that lead to the result. Be careful not to take credit for something that you did not do.

Results: Don’t be shy about taking credit for your behaviour. Quote specific facts and figures. Explain how the outcome benefitted the organisation or your area. Make the outcomes easily understandable.

• What results did the actions produce?

• What did you achieve through your actions and did you meet your goals?

• Was it a successful outcome? If not, what did you learn from the experience?

Keep the situation and task parts brief. Concentrate on the action and the result. If the result was not entirely successful describe what you learned from this and what you would do differently next time. Make sure you focus on your strengths.