Commercial Lead - Estates/FM category

Job summary

The Government Estate is key to the delivery of public services; it comprises over 203,000 assets with a combined floor area of 160 million m2. This presents both a challenge and opportunity for Crown Commercial Service in supporting the strategic occupation and management of Government assets.

The public sector has faced significant challenges across the operational estate, including poor asset condition, financial risks and capability gaps in both the public and private sectors. With the launch of the Government Functional Standards this Government Estate is changing, maintenance and modernisation at the core of its strategy, creating an estate that aligns with the mission of achieving sustained economic growth and transforming Britain into a clean energy superpower.

To help navigate these issues, the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) provides crucial commercial and technical expertise and a direct route to market for departments and contracting authorities. Our goal is to be the public sector's trusted commercial partner, supporting customers to support the successful delivery of the acquisition, operation and disposal of the Government Estate. While we have already made significant progress, CCS is fully committed to enhancing our service offering to achieve this goal and deliver value to the nation.

This is a key role within both Commercial and Property across all types of asset holders in Government. You will lead and own the commercial and procurement process for CCS for Estate Management services, its customers and other buying organisations. This role provides varying activities from developing the Estates category strategy, delivering complex commercial agreements for services ranging from property searches to property management whilst being accountable to some of CCS’s most high-profile stakeholder relationships.

The CCS Commercial Directorate Commercial is the largest directorate in CCS. We design, develop, and manage the commercial agreements used by customers across the public sector. Our customers rely on our specialist teams' deep category expertise to access markets efficiently while managing supply chain and regulatory risk. Through our work, we have helped our customers annually:

• Spend more than £40 billion through our agreements.
• Achieve over £4 billion in annual commercial benefits

Job description

This commercial role is within the Facilities Management category of the Estates Category Group, a significant commercial area that oversees approximately £12 billion in public sector spending across construction, Facilities Management, and Energy.

In your role as Commercial Lead, you will own the end-to-end lifecycle for your category, reporting to Estates Services Senior Commercial Lead, with line management opportunities you will lead a small, specialist Estates Management team with growth potential. Your collaboration will span various Estate-related commercial categories and will also include supporting the Head of PFI/PPP and the Housing Sector team at CCS.

Your responsibilities will include defining and leading the Estate Management commercial strategy through the agreements commercial lifecycle, driving stakeholder engagement across central government and the wider government sectors, managing supplier performance, identifying a commercial pipeline and ensuring regulatory compliance within your area. In addition, you will provide commercial support to the Head of PFI/PPP and be a member of the Housing Sector working group.

You will join the Estates Services Senior Management Team who are responsible for a myriad of commercial agreements that include furniture, Postal, Courier, Logistics and Warehousing. This supportive team are leaders responsible for driving best-value commercial outcomes for public sectors organisations through their teams.

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

The successful candidate will:

• Further develop and deliver the Estates Management category strategy by implementing centralised commercial deals, ensuring alignment across Government and the wider public sector.
  
  
• Build a network of stakeholders both with suppliers, internal customers, Office of Government Property and other industry experts such as RICS across the public and private sectors and maintain continued strong working relationships
  
  
• Influence customers and category team with in-depth Estate Management market knowledge acting as a source of insight and advice to customers, working with them to define optimal commercial strategies that deliver long term value and efficiencies for their property assets
  
  
• Lead on the engagement with stakeholders to ensure that the solutions are fit for purpose and deliver world class procurement solutions through demonstrating added value through a deep understanding of customer commercial requirements in the acquisition, operation and disposal of their estate as well as associated procurement regulations
  
  
• Lead on the development of standardised call off packs for services such as backlog maintenance surveys and condition surveys to align with British Standards, RICS guidance and Government Functional Standards (GovS004)
  
  
• Liaise with stakeholders at a variety of levels to present/promote the new products e.g. the Estates Management 2 commercial agreement and initiatives/procurement strategy via working groups, customer meetings, exhibitions and events
  
  
• Liaise with customers at an early stage to influence strategic direction for service provision to ensure compliance with and approval of mandated Property and Facilities Management Controls
• Support the management of Tier 1 Suppliers, to improve performance across the whole supply chain, including identification and delivery of commercial benefits and innovation opportunities
  
  
• Manage risk mitigation strategies and contingency plans to address identified risks. Ensure issues are fed back into Category strategies and where appropriate into the supplier Business Reviews.

Technical skills

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

• Proven ability to use Estate Management market information and analysis to determine benchmarks, identify opportunities, and create commercial levers for customers.
• Experience delivering high-quality commercial services across the framework lifecycle and category management requirements in order to lead the development of the current and future solutions in line with current procurement regulations.
• Demonstrable experience building and influencing productive relationships with diverse stakeholders in a complex, fast-moving commercial environment aligned to the critical Government Property stakeholder groups.
• Ability to lead, engage and manage people, influencing positive relationships and creating a high-performance culture in order to deliver against challenging targets both during and following a significant period of change.
• Experience of working in the Estates and property management field, including the procurement of new and replacement commercial vehicles for large property portfolios including an understanding of PFI/PPP and housing sectors.
• Current and deep leading market knowledge related to the Estate Management sector demonstrating an understanding of market limitations.

Benefits

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.

Kindly refer to the following link for the GCF Rewards and benefits page.

https://www.civil-service-careers.gov.uk/gcf-benefits/

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Experience and Technical skills.Your application will be reviewed by a panel and should you be successful at sift we will invite you to attend a Virtual commercial Assessment and Development Centre (VADC). The panel will review results of the VADC and determine which candidates will go through to a subsequent final panel interview. Please note: Only candidates that achieve an A grade at ADC will be invited to interview for this role.

Please be advised that the Virtual ADC is taking place on Thursday 19th March 2026 and will require a full day's attendance.

If you are invited to attend a virtual ADC, but for any reason are unable to meet the date outlined then please get in touch with the team on commercialresourcinghub@cabinetoffice.gov.uk as soon as possible. The ADC is booked and paid for in advance by departments, therefore it is only in certain circumstances we are able to accommodate alternative dates.

For full details of our process, and a likely timeline, please read the attached candidate pack.

Throughout our selection process, we will make decisions about your capability to do the job, based on evidence you provide against the Technical Skills (essential criteria) and your Job History (CV) that you will be asked to provide during the application process. Further help and advice on our application and selection process can be found at this web address https://www.civil-service-careers.gov.uk/gcf-how-to-apply/
Artificial Intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action.

Please see our candidate guidance for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

https://www.civil-service-careers.gov.uk/artificial-intelligence-and-recruitment/
IMPORTANT: If you do not receive an acknowledgement of your application within 2 working days please contact: commercialresourcinghub@cabinetoffice.gov.uk
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see theCivil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Apply and further information

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.The Civil Service welcomes applications from people who have recently left prison or have an unspent conviction. Read more about prison leaver recruitment (opens in new window).Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

• Name : Sean Kelly
• Email : commercialresourcinghub@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : commercialresourcinghub@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

Further information

If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with the Recruitment Principles, and you wish to make a complaint, you should direct this to the Head of Commercial Resourcing Hub at the following email commercialresourcinghub@cabinetoffice.gov.uk quoting the vacancy reference number (if applicable) and the details of your complaint. If you are not satisfied with the response you receive, you can contact the Civil Service Commission via the following web page: http://civilservicecommission.independent.gov.uk/civil-service-recruitm…

Attachments

Guaranteed Interview Schemes (GIS) Opens in new window (pdf, 64kB)448605 - Candidate Pack - CCS - Commercial Lead - Estates FM category .docx Opens in new window (pdf, 1022kB)