Category Manager - Capital Maintenance & Construction

Join our team at Affinity Water, a leading water company committed to excellence and innovation. As a Category Manager, you'll embody our vision by forging strong business partnerships and driving value through proactive and adaptable procurement strategies. Your agility will be crucial in navigating the complex landscape of procurement here at Affinity Water, amid an ongoing Procurement Transformation Programme.

Be part of our journey towards sustainability and efficiency, as we transform the way water is sourced, managed, and delivered. Join us in shaping a brighter future for our communities and the environment.

What we are looking for:

We are looking to appoint a Capital Maintenance & Construction focussed Category Manager to take the reins of business-critical and medium to high spend categories, driving integrated strategies and maximising savings.

Key Responsibilities:

Strategic Category Development:

• Craft integrated and evolving category strategies for complex, medium to high spend categories.
• Influence a significant value of contracted spend, ensuring significant business impact.

Sourcing Excellence:

• Lead the end-to-end sourcing process for high-impact goods or services, managing risk, legislative, and regulatory requirements.
• Drive a multi-million pound qualified savings and benefits pipeline in collaboration with stakeholders.

Stakeholder Engagement:

• Establish and nurture value-based relationships with senior key stakeholders, utilising a full business partnering framework.
• Lead negotiations of significant (multi-million pound) savings and benefits.

Innovation and Expertise:

• Provide expert category knowledge and sourcing management advice, introducing innovation and ideas for market-led competitive advantage.
• Conduct regular external category and sourcing benchmarking, bringing back best practices to enhance our Procurement and Commercial function.

Market Awareness:

• Stay ahead of the curve with regular engagement in the external market for category and sourcing matters, influencing our strategies with market trends, dynamics, and innovations.

Essential experience required:

• Ideally 2-3 years experience, ideally gained within a consulting background or within a Procurement / Category Manager role
• NEC 3 & 4 experience essential 
• The ability and confidence to lead business-critical spend categories.
  
• Demonstrable track record of significant savings delivery through strategic sourcing
• Strong stakeholder management and business partnering skills.
• Adequate knowledge of key category and sourcing management processes, tools, and methodologies
• Experience in leading and/or supporting complex negotiation and dispute resolution skills.
• Proven problem-solving experience and proficiency in cross-functional collaborative working methods.
  

Benefits include:

• Salary circa £50,000, dependant on experience
• Annual leave 26 days, plus a celebration day, plus bank holidays, rising with length of service
• A generous pension scheme that doubles the contributions you make, up to a maximum of 12%
• We offer enhanced Maternity, Adoption and Shared Parental Leave. We also have a Carers policy and Menopause policy to help us support our people through different stages of their lives.
• Company bonus scheme
• Access to our Wellbeing Centre with support for looking after your physical and mental health
• Hybrid working: Improve your home-work balance with hybrid working

If you're ready to make a significant impact on our organisation, apply now and become an integral part of our dynamic team! Shape the future of procurement and drive success in business-critical categories.

You can find out what it’s like to work at Affinity Water through our career site https://www.affinitywatercareers.co.uk/ where our colleagues share their career development stories and you can get a feel for our company culture.

Affinity Water recognises the benefits of greater diversity in our workforce to better reflect the communities we serve. We are committed to building a more inclusive culture where every member of our workforce can thrive.

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