About the job

Job summary

The role of the commercial specialist or Commercial Practitioner - Procurement Management is to lead and manage high quality procurement projects for Crown Commercial Service (CCS) Category Teams and external Customers to deliver their requirements. Working within the Procurement Operations Team, it is the post-holder’s responsibility to ensure procurements are delivered in accordance with the public procurement regulations, UK domestic policy and with CCS standard operating procedures.

Full training will be provided on the public procurement regulations, UK domestic policy and CCS standard operating procedures. We are looking for individuals who can demonstrate the essential criteria and the CCS behaviours: listen, collaborate, respect and trust.

Job description

Key Accountabilities:

• Contribute to the delivery of the Procurement Operations business targets through the delivery of compliant and commercially sound procurements in line with the public procurement regulations.

• Providing support in translating Category colleagues and Customers commercial requirements, into a compliant procurement, which include specific and measurable evaluation criteria

• Take ownership of the modelling of procurement evaluation plans, and provide guidance and training to evaluators

• Provide excellent customer service to internal customers (Category colleagues) and external customers, ensuring they are appropriately informed about progress, issues and risks in a timely and effective manner

• Use foresight and judgement to identify the issues and risks associated with the delivery of procurement results, and take early mitigating actions to minimise effects

• Ensure that a full audit trail is preserved on actions relating to individual procurements and that the central record is continuously maintained

• Capture lessons learnt and actively encourage the sharing of learning and development of best practice across the Procurement Operations Team

• Actively seek out and implement opportunities for continuous improvements within the procurement processes and CCS standard operating procedures

Person specification

Essential Criteria (to be assessed on application):

• Ability to lead projects, to prioritise your own and others’ workloads and to undertake independent decisions with regard to own and others’ workloads without reference to line management

• Ability to identify project risks, and escalate appropriately 

• To be able to provide excellent customer service, by building and developing stakeholder relationships

• Ability to communicate with stakeholders to provide/obtain information, seeking clarified detail.

• To support knowledge sharing within the project/team

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £34,206, Crown Commercial Service contributes £9,543 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Technical skills.

Selection Process

Candidates who are successful at sift will be contacted as soon as possible following the closing date and advised of the interview process in more detail. The sift will commence 22-07-24 and interviews will be held either at one of our offices or via video with interview times and dates to be confirmed. (Subject to change)

To find out more about our recruitment process please click here

Please note: Applicants can make use of artificial intelligence but the information presented at application must be factual.

A reserve list may be held for up to 6 months, which the Civil Service may use to fill future suitably similar vacancies across government for candidates who are considered appointable following interview. Should you be placed on a reserve list and want to be removed please contact recruitment@crowncommercial.gov.uk.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is counter-terrorist check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window). People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.