Contract & Supplier Management Centre of Excellence Lead

The Cabinet Office and HM Treasury (COHMT) operate at the strategic center of the UK Government, managing a portfolio of circa 5bn to deliver critical policy outcomes. The COHMT Commercial Teams vision is to be a top-performing function that sets the standard for excellence across the Civil Service.

The COHMT commercial team has recently undergone a strategic evolution, transitioning into a highly specialised Commercial Delivery and Operations model. The directorate comprises of two delivery clusters and a third cluster containing central strategy, performance and all enabling functions as well as non-category delivery and commercial portfolio management.

The COHMT Commercial team operates with our core values in mind which are:

We are Curious, Collaborative and Kind, we act with Integrity and are Focused on value for money.

Your role will have a significant impact providing the enabling services, governance, and infrastructure to allow the Directorate to provide an effective and efficient commercial service. The role will lead on designing, developing, and delivering a newly established Centre of Excellence (CoE) for contract management and supplier relationship management (SRM) across COHMT. You will ensure that external supplier networks, departmental partnerships, capacity-demand reporting, and continuous improvement activities are strategically aligned to support the broader team. The role will ensure that functional performance in contract management and supplier relationship management is robust and continually evolving. You will also step into support other commercial leaders in challenging contract and supplier issues and provide sound commercial advice.

This role will you will work with the Senior Leadership Team to lead the overarching strategy, framework, and continuous improvement plan for contract management and strategic SRM across the directorate. You will oversee the delivery of functional initiatives, ensuring robust assurance regimes, performance tools, and data integrity exist to monitor critical contracts and department spend.

You will provide authoritative advice and guidance on contract and commercial best practice across the Directorate and wider departments. You will act under your own initiative to influence senior stakeholders, defend the department's commercial position, and manage the cumulative impact of structural and cultural change across the function.

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.

The successful candidate will:

• Design, develop, and deliver a comprehensive Centre of Excellence for contract management and supplier relationship management (SRM) in COHMT Commercial, establishing standard frameworks to drive systemic best practice and operational excellence.