Commercial Lead – Corporate Services

Job summary

We are recruiting a new Commercial Lead for Corporate Service to join Integrated Corporate Services Commercial at an important stage in our development. This is an exciting time to join the team in a leadership role, shaping how corporate commercial services are delivered across an expanding shared services environment.

Integrated Corporate Services was established in 2023 to bring together expert corporate services across government. Sitting within the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, we support a growing range of Departments and partner organisations through a shared service model focused on quality, consistency and value.

Our Commercial team helps partners secure the goods and services they need, manage risk effectively and deliver public value. Within that, the Corporate Services Commercial team leads a team of commercial experts to deliver commercial activity across a complex and high-volume corporate services environment. The category areas include Estates and Operations, Communications, HR, Resourcing and Professional services across contracted spend of around £200m.

As Commercial Lead for Corporate Service, you will lead corporate services commercial activity. You will play a vital role in delivering commercial activity for corporate functions in ICS and the Departments we support. You will work closely with the ICS Corporate Function teams to identify and lead on strategic corporate services commercial activity for the area.

Job description

This role sits within the Digital and Corporate Services procurement team and leads a complex and varied corporate services portfolio.

You will report into the Head of Procurement - Corporate Services and Digital Programmes and have line management responsibility for 2 Associate Commercial Leads, a Commercial Practitioner and a Fast Streamer.

The successful candidate will:

• Leading and managing a team in a period of change
• Leading strategic sourcing activity and providing oversight to the team to deliver sourcing activity
• Working with stakeholders to develop and manage pipeline of work, finding strategic sourcing opportunities to aggregate and improve then working with a team to allocate leads.
• Setting overall direction for Corporate Services Commercial strategy for your portfolio and leading team to develop category strategies for their areas, looking at opportunities to aggregate spend across Departments and find proactive, strategic sourcing opportunities
• Supporting new organisations onboard to ICS Commercial
• Provide commercial advice and guidance to business partners on contract management, lead and support team to lead on commercial contract requirements such as variations and disputes.

This is an excellent opportunity for someone who enjoys working across complex environments, delivering innovation and improvements and building strong partnerships across multiple organisations.

Locations
The successful candidate(s) will be able to agree a contractual workplace from those locations listed in this advert. When selecting your location listed in this job advert please be aware that this will be your contractual base location with a requirement to spend a minimum of 60% of your working time in this organisational workplace.

Your time spent on official duties at workplace locations other than your contractual office such as supplier, customer or partner locations required to perform your role is included in the 60% attendance.

This requirement will however take into consideration any reasonable adjustments agreed upon appointment for people with a disability, flexibilities agreed for those with specific caring responsibilities, or other similar temporary flexibilities.

Person specification

• Lead strategic sourcing and procurement activity across a high volume and complex category, overseeing delivery through the full commercial lifecycle.
• Shape and manage the pipeline of corporate services commercial activity, identifying opportunities to aggregate demand and improve value.
• Provide expert commercial advice on procurements, contracts, variations, disputes and wider commercial matters.
• Build strong relationships across a broad range of stakeholders, providing effective commercial business partnering support.
• Support the onboarding of new organisations into Integrated Corporate Services Commercial and help shape a consistent, high-quality service.
• Drive continuous improvement by strengthening commercial capability, using management information effectively and identifying opportunities to buy more strategically.

Experience and skills required:

• Strong Sourcing Background with ability to lead a team to deliver higher value, complex sourcing activity
• Ability to engage with a wide range of stakeholders at all levels in the organisation
• Ability to manage a high volume of requests and projects, prioritising workload for team and looking for efficiencies to dealing with this
• Corporate Services procurement experience (desirable)
• Category Management and Contract Management experience (desirable)
• Knowledge of Public Procurement Regulations (PCR 2015 and PA23) (desirable)

Technical skills

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• Ability to identify commercial opportunities to work more efficiently and drive value for money
• Use commercial expertise to proactively build effective relationships across a complex organisational landscape
• Ability to work with stakeholders to understand sourcing needs, providing commercial insight and challenge to deliver a strong commercial outcome.
• Strong sourcing experience with experience of leading high value complex procurement activity and ability to lead multiple sourcing projects or commercial activities at the same time.

Benefits

As a valued employee of the Government Commercial Organisation (GCO), you will have access to all the benefits the centre has to offer; including flexible working, generous benefits, Career Coaches, Mentors, L&D, a Commercial College, active talent management and, most importantly, access to commercial projects that will far exceed the scale and complexity on offer elsewhere in the UK.

For existing Civil Servants: For full details of the impact on any move across the civil service on your existing terms and conditions, please read the candidate pack. Please note that any move across the Civil Service may have implications on your ability to continue to claim childcare vouchers.

Kindly refer to the following link for the GCF Rewards and benefits page.

https://www.civil-service-careers.gov.uk/gcf-benefits/

Things you need to know

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Selection process details

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