Job Description

Commercial

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

In this role you will contribute to delivering commercial excellence for the department, providing a customer-focused service, understanding the business need and stakeholder drivers, with the aim of becoming a trusted commercial advisor. You will also develop relationships with the department’s public bodies and functions, driving ‘value for money’ and risk management throughout.

You will work both independently and part of a larger team by drawing on your commercial experience to drive performance and manage setbacks. You will be able to prioritise and manage your own workload to deliver to deadlines, mitigate and escalate any emerging risks and to respond swiftly to changing operational demands.

Public Bodies Business Partnering (PBBP), Professional and Core Services Portfolio

The PBBP team sits within the Public Bodies Business Partnering, Professional and Core Services Portfolio. The team was created in late 2021 to provide commercial functional support to most of the thirty-five public bodies that MoJ sponsor, delivering critical and diverse outcomes, operating across all parts of the justice system.

This comprises of three Executive Agencies: the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA), the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) and the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) alongside other bodies such as the Youth Justice Board (YJB), Parole Board and Judicial Office.

Our aim is to lead our public bodies to be as commercially adept as possible. You will build and maintain strategic relationships between MoJ Commercial and a discrete number of public bodies and associated stakeholders. You will become a trusted partner for all things commercial. The role could be of interest to substantive SEOs seeking to broaden their business partner experience or those substantive HEOs looking for the next step on their career.

Key Responsibilities

These roles are varied, and individual remit is subject to both size of category, and/or all levels of complexity, value and risk within a category. Typically, key responsibilities for a commercial professional in this role may include (but are not limited to):

Building and maintaining key relationships across the department and with important external stakeholders:

• Developing effective working relationships with your portfolio of public bodies. Devise and deploy effective and proportional commercial engagement and strategies to drive value for money, commercial compliance & enhanced commercial capability.

• Build effective working relationships with stakeholders in wider MoJ Commercial, functional areas and across government.

• Provide commercial expertise and advice where needed including representation at project, contract and governance & assurance boards.

• Provision of commercial advice to stakeholders on all aspects of commercial.

• Working with key stakeholders to develop a clear and agreed view of business requirements, and supporting business units in articulating their commercial requirements.

Contributing to the improvement of commercial awareness and capability across the organisation to ensure best practice is applied through all phases of the commercial lifecycle

• Undertake commercial assessments to identify opportunities to improve the commercial awareness & capability of each public body. Proactively devise and implement activity to deliver this improvement.

• Understand and advise on the application of the latest commercial policies and best practice. This will be done in a proportional way reflective of the size, scale, nature and personnel of each public body.

• Create and maintain contract register and commercial pipelines to ensure forward planning for operational and commercial teams.

Enabling and developing the department:

• Championing procurement best practice and working collaboratively with others to create a proactive and intelligent function.

• Contributing to the maintenance and updating of systems throughout the commercial lifecycle.

• Playing a role in building capability of new starters and those on development programmes.

The possibility of leading/supporting sourcing and/or contract management activity, where requirements are not catered for within existing categories.

In addition:

• Mentoring and providing guidance to junior members of the team

• Working within a secure environment on sensitive projects as required

• Leadership and line management of one Assistant Commercial Business Partner.

As part of your own personal career development in the Commercial team, there could be opportunities to move roles at the same grade.  In some circumstances, we may need to move you on to business-critical priorities at the same grade to meet business need.

Essential Criteria

Commercial Focus: Has good experience within a procurement, commercial or buying role. Has a good understanding of the principles of end-to-end commercial lifecycle management, and sourcing and procurement methodologies within the public sector. Awareness of public sector commercial legislation. Evidence of leading and securing ‘value for money’ in a commercial environment. Has strong commercial knowledge, understands commercial law and can use key commercial tools appropriately

Risk and Assurance Management: Demonstrates the ability to manage cyber, personnel and physical risks within an area of responsibility

Commercial Ethics: Demonstrates the ability to apply standards to eliminate corruption, fraud and unethical behaviour in supply chains, taking appropriate actions in the event of any alleged breach of standards

Team Focus: Demonstrates the ability to work as part of a team to support their performance, manage setbacks and resolve issues internally

Build Relationships: Demonstrates the ability to communicate with stakeholders at all levels using different communication styles to articulate the benefits that have been achieved and to establish governance and relationship arrangements

Desirable Criteria

• Working knowledge of systems, e.g. Oracle and/or Jaggaer (Bravo),

• Candidates must have one of the following or a willingness to work towards gaining the appropriate qualification in commercial management profession - CIPS, World CC or similar.

• A working knowledge of Government Functional Standard for Commercial (GovS 008).

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 500). In the statement of suitability, please demonstrate your skills for the role and how you meet the key responsibilities as detailed in the job description.

Behaviours

We will assess your application on the following behaviours. Please use the STAR method in your examples.

• Changing and Improving

• Working Together

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 Changing and Improving.

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 which will be held remotely 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

• Communicating and Influencing

• Changing and Improving

• Working Together

• Managing a Quality Service

Experience

• Improving stakeholder commercial capability in one or more stages of the commercial lifecycle.

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.

Commercial Roles

New entrants are expected to join on the pay minimum. Higher starting salary and / or Recruitment & Retention Allowance may be available for successful candidates with exceptional skills and experience.

We will consider applications from non-qualified candidates, who are willing to develop and work towards a recognised qualification in order to meet the full requirements of the role.

The specialist allowance may apply to fully qualified applicants with a commercial professional qualification, for example CIPS, World CC, etc.

Further details can be provided during the recruitment process