Interim Head of Procurement

**Interim Head of Procurement**
**£500 per day**
**Location: Wirral**

**Main Responsibilities**:

- Develop and implement a procurement strategy to meet the Council’s business objectives.
- Manage the procurement process, including contract negotiations, and ensure compliance with relevant legislation.
- Advise the organisation on all strategic procurement and contract management matters and act as the source of the Council’s procurement expertise.
- Lead and manage the Procurement and Contract Management Service ensuring the appropriate professional standards are continually delivered, development plans in place and resources managed in line with the departmental budget.
- Be accountable for strong and lasting relationships being built with Council Directors, Senior Managers and elected members, implementing policies along with maintaining strategies and business plans and reporting against a set of Corporate Performance Indicators.
- Represent the Council at external meetings, including those with suppliers.
- Manage a team of procurement professionals to deliver an effective service to ensure delivery at a consistently high quality, supporting service departments in the delivery of value for money taking account of their needs to maximise benefits for the wider community.

**Qualifications**:

- A degree or professional qualification in procurement (Essential).
- Educated to master’s degree level (Desirable).

**Knowledge and Skills**:

- Knowledge and experience of the full procurement lifecycle.
- Knowledge of the stages involved in developing and implementing procurement strategies.
- Knowledge of relevant procurement legislation.
- Excellent communication and negotiation skills.

**Experience**:

- Demonstrable experience of developing and implementing procurement strategies (Essential).
- Significant experience of leading, managing and motivating a team made up of employees with different skill sets (Essential).
- Significant experience of delivering organisational improvement through control mechanisms and policy and procedure changes (Essential).
- Significant experience of working closely with commissioners to deliver best value (Essential).
- Experience with Oracle Cloud Fusion (Desirable).
- Experience of implementing new working practices in a Procurement Function (Desirable).

**Start Date: ASAP.