Category Officer

**Category Officer (Inside IR35)**
**Contract Term: 6 months**
**Contracting Authority: Education Authority NI (EANI)**
**Location: Armagh/Hybrid**

EA was established on 1 April 2015 under the Education Act (Northern Ireland) 2014. EA is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department of Education (DE) and the Department for the Economy (DfE), responsible for ensuring that efficient and effective primary and secondary education and educational services are available to meet the needs of children and young people, and for ensuring the provision of efficient and effective youth services.

**The Category Officer will**:

- Assist the Category Manager in the provision of best practice procurement and contract management services within a category area or manage a specialist area of work within Procurement Services;
- Manage the end to end procurement process to deliver value for money solutions for EA clients
- Organise and manage a team of category assistants providing a best practice procurement and contract management service within a category area or manage a specialist area of work within Procurement Services;
- Undertaking research and investigation, analysis of results and devising recommendations. The post will involve review of existing practices and identification of new solutions to operational problems including analytics of data.

**As a Category Officer your main responsibilities would be to**:

- Provide advice and guidance to clients on procurement and procurement related matters;
- Develop commercial tender and contract documentation in line with public procurement policy and best practice;
- Implement and manage procurements to deliver Value for Money solutions within the public procurement policy, legal and accountability frameworks;
- Develop appropriate sourcing, pricing and assessment strategies in specific category areas.
- Develop and implement the most efficient and effective Procure to Pay system for each contract;
- Develop procurement strategies which integrate policies in response of sustainability and continuous improvement;
- Be responsible for the delivery of procurement services in a specific category to include, tender initiation, evaluation, award and contract management;
- Be responsible for the daily management of tender processes ensuring critical deadlines are met and customers obtain works and services on time
- Implement and carry out compliance checks on EA Procurement Service Quality Management System and ensure compliance for a particular procurement category.
- Verify compliance and completeness checks carried out by Category Assistants;
- Interpret and summarise all tender offers received from eTendersNI and produce a comparison of submitted tenders;
- Interpret, clarify, assess and make recommendations on, any issues arising out of tenders and ensure that all parties have a clear understanding of any resulting contract;
- Prepare reports for the EA’s F&GP meetings regarding the award of contracts;
- Prepare letters of award, intention to award and regret letters and quality assure letters prepared by Category Assistants;
- Participate in and contribute to continuously improve performance and design new solutions;
- Be responsible for, manage the design and production of, contract documents schedules for customers giving complete information on all contract terms and conditions.

**You’ll have**:

- Public sector experience in a similar position.
- Knowledge of the PCR (2015), NIPPP and PGNs
- Willingness to work towards achieving CIPS (Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply Chain Management) qualification.
- Excellent communication skills and be able to communicate effectively with staff, customers and suppliers at all levels.
- A pro-active and self-motivated approach.

**Should you require reasonable adjustments at any point during the recruitment process or if there is a more accessible way for us to communicate, please do let me know.**- Please be aware that this role can only be worked within the UK and not Overseas._