Head of Commercial – Education Services

Welcome and thank you for your interest in joining us in our mission to make a positive impact on the national justice system through cutting edge commercial solutions. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is a major government department at the heart of our national justice system, employing over 90,000 colleagues. Responsible for the country’s courts (HMCTS), prisons and probation services (HMPPS), we work to protect and enhance the principles of justice. Never has there been a more exciting time to join us.

As one of the most heavily outsourced departments in Whitehall, MoJ is at the heart of the Government’s recent manifesto commitments.

The Commercial and Contract Management Directorate (CCMD) in MoJ employs ca. 650 professionals, manages over ca. 1800 active contracts and spends ca. £6bn a year with third party suppliers. It provides commercial, procurement and contract management activities across a wide range of categories, ensuring value for money agreements are in place for the wider MoJ to source goods and services. Together the leadership has set a vision for CCMD to be the Government’s best commercial team enabling world class justice.

Within the Rehabilitation in Custody Services division, we are focused on supporting the Department to deliver better outcomes, reduce reoffending and deliver value for money. I joined CCMD a year ago and have set a clear mission for my division: to reduce re-offending through commercial leadership, collaboration and innovation. This mission was developed through a joint session with my divisional teams and supports the CCMD vision. I am personally motivated by delivering positive social outcomes at a national scale whilst challenging established ways of working to drive commercial innovation.

This is an exciting opportunity to gain experience in a frontline service area which is high on the Ministerial agenda and a critical service within HMPPS. You may already be operating at senior level in the private sector and are looking for a change in sector, to drive the national agenda at scale, with the new Government’s focus on MoJ’s role within society. Perhaps you want to try a new category whilst developing your leadership and strategic commercial management skills. You could also already be operating as an experienced commercial lead in another Government department and are ready to take the next step into leadership in a ground-breaking frontline operational area and to widen your experience.

The Prisoner Education Services teams are an integral part of the Rehabilitation in Custody division and deliver contracts to support the education, skills and vocational training of prisoners in custody. These are the flagship contracts of the new Prisoner Education Service, developed to meet the Prison White Paper and MoJ strategic objective of Reducing Reoffending, which is one of MoJ’s strategic priorities.

The service lines include Screening and Assessment Tools, Core Education, Careers Information and Guidance, Library Services, Higher and Further Education and Common Awarding Organisations that provide the certification of achievement. You will line manage a medium-sized team to lead the contract development, contract award and mobilisation programmes across all the above-mentioned service lines for the next generation of Prisoner Education Service contracts. These are structured as 11 regionally lotted contracts, up to 7-year in duration, with the total value ca. £ billion across the 103 prisons in the English HMPPS Estate. The role will also contribute to the key areas of contract development, contract mobilisation & strategic post contract management.

Following the conclusion of contract mobilisation, the role will pivot into creating the services line specific category strategies and plans, working with the supply markets to create innovative service delivery models & piloting new commercial options with the flexibilities afforded within the new Procurement Act. This work will pave the way for the next generation of Prisoner Education Services commercial strategy and the re-procurement to commence over the next few years.

Additionally, you will work with Senior Business Owners and a wide variety of frontline stakeholders in cross-functional teams, including the existing contracts management team to deliver our aspirations.

Locations

The successful candidate(s) will be able to agree a contractual workplace from those locations listed in this advert. When selecting your location listed in this job advert please be aware that this will be your contractual base location with a requirement to spend a minimum of 60% of your working time in this organisational workplace. Your time spent on official duties at workplace locations other than your contractual office such as supplier, customer or partner locations required to perform your role is included in the 60% attendance. This requirement will however take into consideration any reasonable adjustments agreed upon appointment for people with a disability, flexibilities agreed for those with specific caring responsibilities, or other similar temporary flexibilities.

Person specification

Commercial category strategies and planning

• Create targeted category strategies, medium-term delivery plans and pipelines for the various services within their own area of responsibility for 103 prisons in England, including insights and due diligence from supply markets.
• Design and implement category specific governance and pipeline management processes to collaborate across HMPPS & COOG teams for the English Prison estate, including embedding solutions to manage ad hoc changes in requirements.

Supplier and contract management

• Commercially managing the prisoner education services contracts valued at ca. £150m per annum, for all service lines within the category, by collaborating with the HMPPS senior contract managers and COOG functions to ensure delivery of high-quality services to 103 prisons in England.
• Design and implement a strategic supplier management & engagement plan to ensure that the team is at the front foot of being informed on supply market dynamics, commercial information and insights.
• Design and launch supply market capacity building programmes to grow the market size and encourage competition for future services.

Management information and cash savings

• Build system capability, in collaboration with CCMD systems team and other divisional teams, to produce user friendly management information, at prison level for all education service contracts and suppliers, including actual £ spent with each supplier.
• Deliver the year-on-year cash savings to contribute to the CCMD’s savings target ensuring updating of the commercial systems and providing robust calculations and baseline information to validate the savings delivered.

Stakeholder management and team leadership

• Build deep category capability and capacity within education services, including flexibility for future commercial innovation, and be recognised as the commercial expert in those markets.
• Foster a culture of collaborative working to create joined up ways of working within the teams, under own line management and those in cross-directorate programmes, to share knowledge and drive consistent ways of working.
• Harness the skills, experience and professional aspirations of team members and provide career paths within the division to encourage staff retention.
• Recruit new team members to broaden the commercial skill mix within the teams and provide business resilience whilst ensuring alignment with operational delivery and divisional mission.
• Engage positively with a wide range of suppliers and stakeholders, constructively challenging them, as appropriate to the situation and adapting personal style and approaches to achieve the desired commercial outcome.

Professional Qualifications

• Highly numerate and must already hold a MCIPS qualification.

Technical skills

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• Assertive - Demonstrate an adaptive and assured style that inspires confidence to assert the commercial viewpoint, whilst engaging and challenging stakeholders, to influence positive commercial outcomes.
• Manages Complexity - Effective in fast-paced environments, manage competing priorities across multiple fronts (managing multiple stakeholders, multiple simultaneous workstreams) to deliver against targets & timelines in a commercial programme.
• Decisive - Critically evaluate range of conflicting information & commercial challenges, recommend decisions in short timeframes, based on robust risk-assessed options & evidence, focusing on delivering best outcomes & proposing trade-offs.
• Builds Relationships - Experience building & managing positive relationships with a wide range of suppliers & stakeholders with conflicting objectives & agendas. Assert commercial perspective & gain agreement to achieve optimum outcomes.
• Coaching Manager - Experience of motivating & managing multi-site team members, with a range of skills & experiences, at different levels of professional development to provide career paths within the division and encourage staff retention.

As a valued employee of the Government Commercial Organisation (GCO), you will have access to all the benefits the centre has to offer; including flexible working, generous benefits, Career Coaches, Mentors, L&D, a Commercial College, active talent management and, most importantly, access to commercial projects that will far exceed the scale and complexity on offer elsewhere in the UK.

For existing Civil Servants: For full details of the impact on any move across the civil service on your existing terms and conditions, please read the candidate pack. Please note that any move across the Civil Service may have implications on your ability to continue to claim childcare vouchers.