Senior Purchasing Specialist

• A fantastic opportunity to join BWPC as a Senior Purchasing Specialist
• Offers agile/hybrid working approach

About Our Client

The team at Bristol and Weston NHS Purchasing Consortium (BWPC) delivers procurement services to the two large acute NHS Trusts in Bristol, North Bristol NHS Trust & University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust. BWPC support the trusts in the development and delivery of their procurement strategies, offering professional advice and delivering cost savings through sustainable procurement on an annual spend of circa £600m.

BWPC are proud to feature amongst their clients two of the largest NHS Acute Trusts in the UK, with a combined total of over 2,300 patient beds, 21,000 staff and offering over 100 different clinical services. BWPC's future vision is to grow the portfolio of their clients to support other health and social care providers in the region. BWPC are already supporting regional procurement activities, working to ensure our local health and welfare providers are able to deliver whole system cost reductions, whilst ensuring an optimised service delivery.

The team at BWPC work closely with clinical facing colleagues and strive to develop collaborative working partnerships to help clinical colleagues deliver great patent care through robust procurement of good and services. Collaborative working with both trusts and other organisations brings economies of scale, sharing of data and best practice to maximise value and efficiencies for our clients.

Job Description

This is a Senior Purchasing Specialist role within one of the six category teams at an evolving and growing Bristol and Weston NHS Purchasing Consortium. The role will report directly into the Category Manager with the Senior Purchasing Specialist acting as a strategic member of the team. Senior Purchasing Specialists have the freedom to automatously lead their own projects as well as directly supporting the Category Manager in delivery the Category Strategy.

This is an excellent opportunity to develop your specialist skills, managing large scale complex strategic procurements to both organisational and patient facing services. This role is suitable for an experience individual looking mentor and support an established team whilst also providing specialist advice and support to a wide range of customers.

Acute Healthcare Procurement requires the running of end-to-end tenders utilising frameworks and public tendering regulations. Senior Purchasing Specialists will be expected to autonomously set up and run these tenders, working in partnership with Clinical Purchasing Specialists and project Sponsors in the trust.

Senior Purchasing Specialists will be expected to build and maintain stakeholder relationships with a variety of role across the trusts. Day-to-day activity will include attending stakeholder working groups and meetings on behalf of the consortium and feeding back to BWPC peers and management.

BWPC are a commercial function embedded in acute healthcare setting, strong communication skills are required when working with clinical colleagues to interpret procurement theory, legislation & process so that they see the benefit in working with procurement colleagues and how procurement adds value to their role, objectives, and the delivery of patient care.

Supplier Relationship management is also a key element of role and you will be expected to liaise with key suppliers on a day-to-day basis. NHS Supply Chain is a key strategic supplier for BWPC and the Senior Purchasing Specialist will maintain this relationship on behalf of the category.

Good handle of the market to identify and mitigate supply resilience issues.

Ensuring compliance to policy and regulation is a key part of the role. This includes compliance with the trusts Standard Financial Instructions, Public Contract Regulation, Social Value & Net Zero, as well as observing and enforcing purchasing ethics.

The Successful Applicant

Record of realising sustainable financial savings and cost reduction together with evidence of leading procurements which result in tangible business change.

Proven negotiation and influencing skills, both with external supply base and internally with key client stakeholders.

A strategic thinker with effective planning skills with the ability to translate procurement strategy into deliverable operational results.

Have experience in analysing data to proactively search and identify opportunities and be able to interpret and present the opportunity to influence decision makers and gain buy-in.

Have knowledge of PCR 2015 and demonstration of proactiveness in keeping up with the latest legislation for public sector procurement.

Experience in managing contracts throughout the whole contract lifecycle, monitoring both supplier and trust performance.

The successful applicant will be able to coach and mentor more junior members of the team to help develop the procurement skill within the category, please note the successful applicant will not line manage the junior members of the team.

Be comfortable speaking and feeding back to the wider BWPC team and management at internal meetings.

Competent in identifying suitable reporting metrics, setting up reporting schedule & presenting reporting outcomes meaningfully.

What's on Offer

The NHS offer a generous range of benefits to employees:

• Salary between £41,659- £47,672
• Competitive pension scheme.
• 27 days annual leave minimum plus bank holidays.
• Agile / Hybrid working approach
• There is a relocation package on offer to successful candidates
• North Bristol NHS Trust who hosts Bristol and Weston NHS Purchasing Consortium have a strong wellbeing culture. Staff are encouraged to ensure that you are looking after your own wellbeing as well as that of your colleagues. This is strongly reflected in BWPC.
• Staff extracurricular activities - Southmead charity events.
• Access to the NHS Childcare Salary Sacrifice Scheme.
• Access to many NHS discount opportunities.
• Cycle to work scheme.

Where specific UK qualifications are required we will take into account overseas equivalents. All third party applications will be forwarded to Michael Page.

Ref Code: MPYC0120235891119Z