Contract type – Full Time, Permanent, Secondment.
Location – London
Band – C
Salary – £44132 – £52652
Information about the Role
The current operational environment for the Counter Terrorism Policing Headquarters (CTPHQ) is dynamic, and CT Policing must continually evolve to respond to the ever changing threat landscape facing the UK. As a Commercial Consultant, your procurement expertise will contribute towards the network’s CONTEST strategy to reduce the risk from terrorism to the UK, improving the national response to the threat it poses.
CTPHQ is a hosted police force within the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS). The MPS Commercial Services department is comprised of six pillars which have overall accountability for activity covering the commercial lifecycle, as well as relevant business partnering responsibilities across the wider business. These Commercial Consultant roles sit within the Covert and Counter Terrorism Policing pillar.
The Covert and Counter Terrorism Policing pillar manages c£80-£100m spend per annum across various categories. We work alongside UK police forces, the UK intelligence community as well as collaboration with international partners. The work is cutting edge, innovative, and given the subject matter, of a sensitive nature.
As a Commercial Consultant you will be expected to undertake Category Management, contributing to delivering Commercial excellence for the organisation, providing a customer focussed service, understanding the business need and stakeholder drivers, with the aim of becoming a trusted commercial advisor. You will also develop relationships with the organisation’s key and strategic suppliers, driving value for money and risk management excellence across the category.
The role of a Commercial Consultant is varied and you will play an essential part in supporting the overall commercial lifecycle. You will be working primarily on aspects relating to category management, feeding into strategy and policy development, analysing data and using market insight to support the sourcing options, and working on aspects across the procurement process. You will work as part of a larger team, but be expected to work autonomously and independently, and liaise with the wider business and partner organisations to support improved commercial outcomes for CTPHQ.
Professional Services
The Professional Services pillar plays a pivotal role across the network, ensuring all areas of the business have effective routes to bring resource into the organisation to address both capability and capacity gaps. This is a high-profile role in which you will regularly liaise with senior business stakeholders, providing commercial solutions and managing the commercial deals for complex organisational challenges and those that are operationally sensitive and important. The pillar strives to deliver value for money, innovative solutions, implement a long-term sustainable strategy to drive cost savings, improve compliance and provide a trusted service to stakeholders.
Responsibilitie
The post holder will be required to do the following:
- 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
- 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
- Understands relevant sourcing options and analysis, and delivers positive outcomes through the procurement process:
- Working independently across end-to-end strategic sourcing activities for the organisation
- Engaging with key stakeholders across the organisation 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
- Drafting the commercial recommendations into business cases, demonstrating a project’s benefits, value for money and risk
- Providing a procurement service to the organisation 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:
- Supporting contract management via the management of strategic contracts within relevant categories
- Building and maintaining key relationships across the organisation and with important external stakeholders:
- 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 organisation:
- Contributing to the maintenance and updating of systems throughout the procurement lifecycle
- Feeding into catalogue and content management for the organisation, owning key aspects and working with stakeholders to promote the use of catalogues
- Working within a secure environment upon sensitive projects as required
Key Skills
The post holder must meet the following essential criteria:
- A good level of Category Management experience and knowledge
- Good understanding of sourcing and procurement methodologies, as well as relevant Public Sector processes, policy and governance
- Effective communicator who can work with a range of stakeholders
- Ability to change and adapt in order to work effectively in a variety of situations
- Ability to understand and appreciate different and opposing perspectives
- Ability to prioritise and manage own workload to deliver to deadlines and knowing when to seek support when needing to balance both operationally urgent and important tasks
- A good level of understanding across category discipline
- Excellent written & oral communication and interpersonal skill
- Excellent time management and delegation skills
- Good report writing skills
The following are desirable criteria for the post holder:
- Ability to understand commercial imperatives including trading relationships
Experience
It is essential the post holder has the following experience:
- A successful career in procurement/ similar environment with typically 1 + years category management/ procurement experience where evidence of cost savings and value for money efficiencies can be demonstrated
- Understanding of Procurement Legislation (Public Contract Regulations 2015 and Defence and Security Public Contract Regulations 2011)
- Experience of working effectively with internal stakeholders
How to Apply
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