About the job

Summary

Building a strong Commercial Function in Government, and with it the right commercial capability, is at the heart of a far-reaching programme of Civil Service reform.

We are building a cadre of commercial talent in all Government departments; people who can manage our commercial portfolios, who can lead our most complex and novel programmes and projects, people who have the gravitas and depth of experience to work alongside our policy and operational leaders to develop innovative commercial arrangements, whether through joint ventures, outsourcing or best-in-class contracts.

The Government Commercial Organisation is an employer which is truly committed to creating a welcoming, inclusive workplace where all our people are able to bring their whole selves to work and are able to perform to their potential. We understand the importance of diversity and inclusion and strive for a workplace that reflects the communities which we serve. We especially welcome applications from underrepresented groups including Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic candidates, candidates with a disability and candidates with gender-diverse identities. Appointments will be made on merit on the basis of fair and open competition.

We have already made significant progress through the establishment of the Government Commercial Organisation (GCO), our single employer of senior commercial talent across government. This role will sit within the GCO, but based in our MOD commercial team delivering departmental objectives.

Job description

This role formally brings the coordination of customer commercial teams, from across the military services and wider, into a single director role for the first time. As such, it will be important that the right balance is struck between delivering in an agile, customer focused manner and achieving best value and efficiency through joint working.

You will be leading on commercial delivery and strategies across customer commercial organisations, ensuring that category management is embedded, and procurement activity is managed effectively. You will also identify and deliver opportunities for joint working across these diverse teams through a change programme to deliver a step change in service delivery and commercial benefits.

You will be responsible for a procurement spread of circa £3.5bn – with a wide spectrum of mostly indirect spend categories. Finding the appropriate model to deliver category management across these areas will be a key challenge for the role holder.

This is a complex stakeholder landscape in which requires you to deliver an effective intelligent customer service that gets the best value for Defence as a whole.

Responsibilities

You will be:

• Driving category ownership through the commercial and business organisations and creating links with sector and industrial strategies across Defence to enable supply chain development and improved value;


• Demonstrating clear market insight and flow-down category approaches to the various commercial organisations;


• Exercising innovation to reach successful outcomes to complex procurements and supplier relationships;


• Lead negotiations where required and supporting acquisitions in line with the agreed strategy;


• Reviewing and driving performance of the commercial function and recommending improvements to the Director General Commercial;


• Overseeing and applying best practice mentoring to the Commercial activity in the Customer Commercial Organisations;


• Developing, delivering, and assuring multi-million-pound commercial strategies that represent best possible value for customer organisations, delivering savings year on year;


• Establishing and maintaining comprehensive measurement of the Customer Commercial Organisations delivery element of the overall MOD Commercial Function;


• Ensuring the implementation of, and compliance with, commercial policy;


• Coordinating and working with other ‘Commercial Delivery Directors’ as part of the commercial Director board;


• Providing robust leadership to a diverse and geographically dispersed organisation;


• Engaging with external stakeholders to promote and enhance the reputation of the organisation and the Commercial Function in particular;


• Functional leadership for circa 500 commercial colleagues including direct line management for around 6 Heads of Commercial that lead each of the teams.

You will also:

• Be amongst the most senior members of the Government Commercial Function and play a role in the broader commercial reform programme led by the Government Chief Commercial Officer;

• Play a key leadership and change management role in developing a strong commercial function for the Ministry of Defence and across Government.

Technical skills

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

• Developing and implementing effective category strategies for procurements and programmes, that have delivered significant benefits;
• An understanding of what best-practice procurement looks like and a track record of delivering change and improvement across a commercial function;
• Strong leadership experience working at Board level and with a broad range of Board-level stakeholders;
• Working as a collaborative member of a larger team in a matrix structure, driving organisational change and with a track record of uplifting capability;
• Ability to influence effectively at Senior Level in private and public sector.

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.