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.

Prison Industries

The category team is responsible for sourcing a wide range of goods which support HMPPS Prison Industries HQ (PIHQ). This is a team managing over 25 contracts and with an exciting and interesting pipeline to deliver.

PIHQ have the responsibility to provide essential employment places for prisoners and opportunities for them to gain skills, qualifications, and work experience to improve their employment prospects upon release with the overall aim of reducing re-offending.

PIHQ manage industries that run in 95 prisons in England and Wales, including some private sector prisons, and currently operate 465 manufacturing workshops employing around 1060 staff and around 15,000 prisoners and detainees. PIHQ supports other Government Departments by using offender labour to manufacture over £3million pounds worth of goods annually. PIHQ manufacture a variety of goods in their Engineering, Woodwork, Textile, Print, Laundry, Plastics, Waste Management and Land Based Activities workshops.

The category team procures and manages a variety of contracts to supply capital equipment, machinery/tools, and the raw materials (including timber, textiles, metal, plastics, paper, paint) required to manufacture those items.

Role Summary

In this role you will be expected to 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 key and strategic suppliers, driving value for money and risk management excellence across the category.

You will be expected to support across the overall commercial life cycle. You will contribute to strategy and policy development, analyse data and use market insight to support the sourcing options, and work across the procurement process.

You will work as part of a larger team, but will be expected to work independently by prioritising and managing your own workload to deliver to deadlines and to respond to changing operational demands.

Key Responsibilities

This role is varied, and individual remit is subject to both size of category, and/or level 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):

Strategic delivery and management within a category:

• Supporting development of specifications to deliver requirements that are in line with business needs, and existing category strategy

• Engaging, where required, with the relevant lead ensuring that business requirements are in line with existing category strategies

• Contributing to the development of category strategies

• Carrying out analysis, research and requirements gathering to feed into demand forecasting and category strategies

• Tracking progress against category plans and working to deliver key tasks

Understanding relevant sourcing options and analysis, delivering positive outcomes through the procurement process:

• Working independently across end-to-end strategic sourcing activities for the department

• In some cases, leading on low value/low complexity procurements, with support from senior commercial colleagues

• Engaging with key stakeholders across the department to support the team develop a clear and agreed view of business requirements

• Advising and providing professional guidance throughout the sourcing process, supporting the evaluation of a range of sourcing models

• Gathering inputs and at times leading development of commercial input into business cases, evaluating the benefits, value and risks of projects

• Providing a procurement service to the department which delivers demonstrable value for money and compliant goods and services contracts as part of a team of procurement professionals on larger procurement activities

• Understanding, and being able to advise on, sourcing compliance and frameworks

Ensuring effective commercial contract and supplier management within the category:

• Day-to-day management of one or more low to medium value/risk/ complexity contracts within the category, with support from senior commercial colleagues

• Managing one or more contracts/suppliers, ensuring effective stakeholder management, governance, performance management frameworks, escalation, risk management, issues resolution, financial management, change control and compliance

• Contributing to the management and administration of the whole supply chain portfolio, including the implementation of supply chain management and supplier relationship strategies

• Supporting the administration of change control notices, data/spend analysis, management information and reporting

• Tracking and owning risks relating to specific contracts, taking steps to mitigate commercial risks

• Identifying perceived areas of risk, and supporting analysis of suppliers for risk and assurance purposes

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

• Developing effective working relationships with supplier organisations to establish appropriate governance and relationship arrangements, ensuring the effective management of clarifications and change requests

• Engaging and working closely with the relevant senior business lead, ensuring that business requirements are supported by category strategies

• Identifying key suppliers and articulating management and engagement level required to assure the supply chain

• Assisting with senior internal stakeholder management across the business, helping them be informed about business elements that aim to move forward critical decision making at the top level

• Assisting with senior external stakeholder management, holding working level relationships with individuals at external stakeholder groups

Enabling and developing the department:

• Contributing to the maintenance and updating of systems throughout the procurement lifecycle

• Feeding into catalogue and content management for the department, owning key aspects and working with stakeholders to promote the use of catalogues

Working within a secure environment on sensitive projects as required

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 some experience within a procurement, commercial or buying role. Has a good understanding of the principles of end-to-end commercial lifecycle management. Has an understanding of elementary economics factors that may determine a market shape, dynamics and models, the changes in the business needs of an organisation and is familiar with key commercial tools.

Risk and Assurance Management: Demonstrates the ability to identify and communicate cyber, personnel and physical risks and gain agreement on how they should be managed/mitigated.

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),

• Awareness and understanding of public sector commercial principles and legislation

• Awareness of public sector commercial legislation including EU and UK Rules and UK interpretations. 

• 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.

• We are looking for people with the right personal qualities: enthusiasm, energy, proactivity, and self-motivation while being flexible and adaptive to a demanding and changing environment.

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

Behaviours

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

• Communicating & Influencing

• Managing a Quality Service

• Seeing the big picture

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 Communicating & Influencing.

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

• Making Effective Decisions

• Working Together

• Delivering at Pace

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