Strategic Category Manager - INTERNAL

THIS ROLE IS INTERNALLY RESTRICTED

To apply for this job, you must meet all of the following criteria:

• Be an employee of Kirklees Council.
• Be employed by Kirklees for the duration of the recruitment process – up to and including the start date.
• Have successfully completed your probationary period.

(Please note that if you work for an Academy, you are not an employee of the Council.)

Your employment status will be checked, if you do not meet the above requirements your application will be rejected. 

Our employees are at the very heart of the services we provide to the community, to help us achieve our ambitions, we want the best possible team. In return, we will make sure you are rewarded with a great range of staff benefits to support you in and out of work. 

You will be joining a fast-paced multi award-winning procurement team at an exciting and important time in driving standards and best practice within our category led approach to procurement. 

You will play an important leadership role in the delivery of a forward thinking, flexible, creative, commercial and collaborative procurement team, which aims to exemplify excellent procurement practice.  

If you are ambitious, have significant experience and skills in public sector procurement, with a flair for delivering commercial, creative and solution focussed procurement strategies and outcomes then we would love to hear from you.

We are looking for people who demonstrate all of the Council’s behaviours and expectations and continually strive for excellence.  You will be confident and highly competent in leading a category of spend for construction and infrastructure, advising, guiding, setting strategies and running high value and complex procurements.  You will have excellent people skills, attention to detail and be able to perform under significant pressure to challenging and changing timescales, alongside managing and delivering to stakeholder expectations. 

The Councils procurement team is focused into the following strategic category areas; 

• Adults, Public Health & Childrens 

• Built Environment
  • Construction & Infrastructure and Special Projects
  • Facilities Management, Transport, Environment & Waste 

• Corporate & IT

We are looking for candidates with experience of working at a category manager role level who have significant market and commercial knowledge within the Built Environment area and have a good working knowledge of model forms of contract such as JCT & NEC 3 and 4. 

The successful candidates will need to demonstrate;

• Significant experience in procurement and are CIPS Level 6 qualified or can demonstrate they have been working to an equivalent level
• Substantial category knowledge in construction and infrastructure
• Understanding and experience of market challenges and opportunities
• To be solution focused and able to deliver change through influencing and engaging stakeholders
• Have well developed negotiation and communication skills across varying audiences
• To be a motivated leader who can bring the best out of the staff they manage
• To be solution focused, risk aware and able to deliver change by influencing and engaging stakeholders, with a professional, proactive and “can-do” approach.

You will be responsible and take the strategic lead for Construction, Infrastructure and Special Projects category of spend and be expected to work flexibly across other categories as the need arises. 

In order to be short-listed for this job please demonstrate how you meet the Person Checklist as detailed on the attached Job Description.

 For an informal discussion about the role please contact Jane Lockwood on 01484 221000.