Procurement Assistant

**Job Title: Procurement Assistant**

**Reporting to: Procurement Manager**

**Location: Discovery Park, Sandwich**

**Salary: £23,000-£25,000 (DOE)**

**Hours of Work: Monday-Friday, 0800-1700 (40 hours)**

**Company Background**

Located in the East of England’s life sciences cluster, with close links to London, Stevenage and Cambridge, Discovery Park has grown to be a thriving part of the South East’s life science community and is the cornerstone of the UK’s healthcare sector.

The growing tenant community includes Pfizer, which built the site’s reputation as a centre for drug discovery and discovered some of the most famous drugs in the world here

We have a rapidly expanding and vibrant tenant community with over 160 companies, from start ups to multinationals, working in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, healthcare, technology, professional services and more.

The site offers high quality laboratory, office and manufacturing facilities, the space and support to expand, access to local finance, and a strong local scientific talent pool.

The park is focused on becoming a world class, world leading science park, growing and attracting innovative life sciences companies. Our exciting plans include a new Incubator facility in Building 500, and development of a Manufacturing Village.

Working with tenants and partners we look to bring new activities to site and drive forward areas such as Tech Bio/Digital Health, Industrial Biotech and Neuroscience.

Discovery Park Management Ltd (DPML) supplies facilities support to the park - buildings, grounds, roads, infrastructure and communication networks. We also supply utilities to all the buildings and valuable services such as front of house, cleaning, catering and conferencing.

Moving forward the focus will be on optimising our operations, continued efficiency, a focus on growth to ensure our ambitions are realised.

Our core values will support a culture focused on quality and continuous improvement. We are committed to **Inspirational Leadership** and being **People Focused**, through whom we will deliver **Operational Excellence** and create a **Community Spirit** that will shape our future and will expand Discovery Park as a global centre for life sciences and technology.

**Main purpose of the role**:
Administrative tasks and PO handling for the Procurement Manager, including placing orders and monitoring their progress with suppliers, as well as monitoring, and maintaining the PO and stock processes in the Sage 200 system software.

**Essential duties and responsibilities**
- Support the Procurement Manager in procuring goods and services, ensuring that processes are followed to meet business objectives and operational needs in terms of price, quality, and delivery targets.
- To be a point of contact both internally and externally in relation to order progress for spares, equipment, and service contracts.
- Develop and maintain effective relationships with suppliers.
- Work collaboratively with departments to understand the business and functions of the Park’s diverse teams.
- Assist the Procurement Manager in managing contract terms with suppliers to ensure value for money, quality standards, and delivery terms with technical and operational input from departmental leads.
- Alert the Procurement Manager to contracts due for renewal, and assist in identifying alternative suppliers, their profiles, costs comparisons.
- Occasional benchmarking and price comparisons of products to ensure Discovery Park is getting the best value for money.
- Work with suppliers and contribute to a process to measure effective performance, quality, and compliance.
- Ensure parts are sourced in timescales to meet operational requirements.
- Contribute to culture change across the business by promoting the importance of supplier relationships and engage with departmental leads and colleagues to ensure this is delivered across the business.
- Act as holiday and sickness cover for Site Operations Coordinator.
- Monitor the inbox; create and distribute job tickets for engineering/facilities.
- Liaise with Heads of Department to ensure the correct distribution of work.
- Creating / updating and closing of job tickets.
- Maintaining the critical master spreadsheets, updating and moving data from one spreadsheet to another.
- Manage the approvals for requisitions and send to Procurement.
- Update Job Tickets with delivery details from Goods In.
- Requesting contractors attend site.

**Additional Duties and Responsibilities**:

- Supporting the Finance team with integral processes that ensure correct cost allocation of supplies, stock, and labour.
- As reasonably required by the Business and/or directed by Management.

**Person specification**

**Essential**:

- IT skills, particularly MS Office (Outlook, Excel).
- Highly numerate, with strong attention to detail.
- To be able to communicate articulately both in written and verbal formats.
- To be able to organise and priori