Procurement Officer

Positive Employment is currently recruiting for a Procurement Officer for our client a government organisation in Southampton. The successful post holder will be primarily working on procurement projects within the Residents Services directorate which encompasses Housing, Environment Services, Customer and Leisure. This role is a temporary contract initially for 3 months with the possibility to extend.

• Support the successful and timely delivery of end to end procurement projects, including (but not limited to) producing procurement documentation, assistance with specification development, dealing with clarification requests, and standards and evaluating tender responses.
• Publishing procurement opportunities through the e-tendering portal, dealing with clarification requests, evaluating tender responses, publishing award notices and overseeing the contract execution process for contracts signed under hand.
• By working closely with a Procurement Business Partner and key business stakeholders, identify and implement appropriate procurement strategies which has been approved by a Procurement Business Partner to meet service area requirements from assisting with needs analysis through to completion of the full tender and evaluation process.
• Work closely with a Procurement Business Partner, service areas and the Contracting Relationships Team as part of a ‘virtual team’ within Contracting and Procurement to deliver a cohesive business partnering approach and to ensure that the entire contract lifecycle is robustly managed and a structured handover of the resulting contract is undertaken.
• Work closely with the Procurement Support Officers to help manage and populate systems including tender management, catalogue management and the contracts register. Help to manage generic inboxes and supplier questions and answers through the tender management system. This is to include distributing and managing enquiries and answers.
• Support or manage projects within agreed timescales and which adhere to procurement legislation and strategies, policies and procedures.
• Working closely with a Procurement Business Partner, to understand service areas’ needs and requirements as part of wider business planning initiatives, including identifying and implementing opportunities to consolidate requirements and spend and eliminate disaggregation as appropriate.
• Manage workloads consisting of multiple projects within timescales agreed with Procurement Business Partners and adhere to procurement legislation and standards at all times.
• Support the development and delivery of a 5-year pipeline and annual workplan of work based upon operational and business needs. Maintain accurate records of procurement and contract activity in accordance with Council requirements.
• Develop and provide technical input into tender documentation.

• Experience of working in procurement with these types of service areas would be preferred.
• At least three years’ experience in a relevant role.
• Educated to CIPS level 4 (or making progress towards obtaining qualification).
• Contract management knowledge and/or experience (Desirable).
• Understanding of financial and contractual processes (Desirable).
• An understanding of all relevant procurement legislation and how this is applied in a Local Authority environment.

Working Hours: 37 hrs / 9:00am - 17:00pm / Monday - Friday

Pay: £27.03 per hr

Please note this role is within the scope of IR35.