• Wellington or Christchurch location
• Permanent position
• Flexible working friendly!!

Beyond Recruitment is proud to be supporting the Ministry of Education in finding a Principal Procurement Specialist to fill a permanent, full-time position. With one of the largest public sector procurement groups, the Ministry of Education provides the opportunity to tackle interesting and challenging work and develop your career within their vibrant and diverse Strategic Initiatives Procurement team.

About the group

Infrastructure & Digital - Ministry of Education, leads inclusive, accessible and integrated national, digital and physical infrastructure and transport services to the education system. Their vision for school property is that all schools have quality learning environments as part of a well-managed and sustainable portfolio that helps deliver equitable and excellent outcomes for every child.

The Strategic Initiatives team forms part of the wider Infrastructure team procuring additional services i.e. panel management, strategic ideation and wider procurement activities for the Ministry.

About this role

The Principal Procurement Specialist, Strategic Initiatives will be part of the Ministry’s Commercial Procurement - Infrastructure team and will report and provide support to the Regional Procurement Manager. The role requires co-ordination and delivery of ‘end to end’ procurement activities as well as identifying and implementing areas of improvement.

Good procurement and commercial experience are required to drive the best outcomes. The Principal Procurement Specialist, Infrastructure must be able to build strong working relationships with a selection of key stakeholders and will have the ability to prioritise and multi-task in an environment where workloads can escalate quickly.

Accountabilities of the role

• Promoting good procurement practise in line with the Ministry’s procurement policy providing advice on policy and procedures covering the selection of suppliers, tendering and the end to end procurement life cycle.
• Contributing to the development, utilisation and maintenance of effective procurement policy, processes, practices and systems.
• Leading/conducting high value/complex procurements including: undertaking needs analysis and procurement planning, drafting procurement documentation, managing the procurement process, facilitating evaluation, contract negotiations and awarding.
• Identifying and implementing improvements to procurement practices
• Providing management reporting as required.

About you

You will bring to this role:

• Previous procurement experience ideally in the public sector
• The ability to build effective working relationships with key stakeholders
• The ability to prioritise and multi-task in a fast paced, dynamic environment
• Strong negotiation, persuasion and influencing skills
• Ability to think logically and strategically
• Ability to quickly grasp complex concepts and communicate these clearly both verbally and in writing
• Honest & Courageous - Deliver the hard messages, and make decisions in a timely manner; to advance the longer-term best interests of customers