Commercial Manager

At Network Rail, we're part of a large family serving millions of passengers and freight users throughout the UK every day. Our service impacts millions of people, and we strive to become more efficient as we enhance, maintain, and operate our network. Now is a fantastic time to join our team in Wales and Western Region as we finalise reforms to our maintenance organisation, delivering a safer, more reliable, and punctual service for passengers and employees through:

• Quicker fault fixes by more agile, multi-disciplined response teams.
• Individual rostering to send the right number of people to fix faults.
• Multi-skilling to equip our people with the knowledge and skills to fix common faults.
• Accelerated and improved technology deployment, including labour and life-saving technology.

Our passengers and freight users are at the heart of everything we do. We help connect people to their friends and families and get goods to their destination safely and efficiently. We're an inclusive employer of choice, offering opportunities to learn and grow through personal and professional development. If you make the grade, you can look forward to a rewarding and fulfilling career with a company recognised in Glassdoor's 2021 Best Places to Work.

About the role

To provide post-contract commercial management of medium value/medium risk activity and support pre-contract activity within the project delivery team's scope of work, offering specialist commercial advice, guidance, and recommendations to mitigate commercial risks.

Responsibilities

• Support functional teams in monitoring for breaches of corporate governance, ensuring compliance with Network Rail Corporate Governance rules in a timely manner.
• Manage cost reporting of all allocated accounts within the Network Rail reporting framework, including Cost Forecasting, Anticipated Final Cost, Cost of Work Done, Gross Billing, and Current Contract Value.
• Monitor, manage, and report on all commercial aspects of allocated accounts, flagging issues and proposing mitigation actions at the earliest opportunity to the Contracts and Procurement Manager.
• Monitor awareness of all site activities on allocated accounts to influence decision-making from a commercial perspective.
• Review contractor delivery, including leading valuation of medium value/medium risk contracts and attending progress meetings to actively influence contractor's commercial behaviours, delivery, and activity.
• Manage assessment and valuation of contractor's applications and processing of payment certification in accordance with Network Rail processes, contractual terms and conditions, and commensurate with contractual entitlement. Challenge and audit cost elements where appropriate.
• Provide proactive advice and guidance to budget holders on all changes, including proposed scope changes, recommending appropriate action in accordance with Network Rail change control systems. Produce all required documentation for approval in line with levels of delegated authority, including comparative estimates where required.
• Produce applications for payment/invoices to outside clients in accordance with relevant funding agreements, including supporting documentation as appropriate.
• Identify and advise on all commercial risk/claim events.
• Provide ad-hoc management information and analysis to promote informed decision-making.
• Produce appropriate commercial correspondence and contractual notices for issue in accordance with contractual conditions. Retain and archive commercial records properly upon close-out.
• Undertake final account settlements and internal reconciliation for contract close-out as required and within agreed timescales. For multi-year framework agreements, agree and reconcile annual accounts within 6 months of each year-end.
• Support demonstration of efficiencies and continual improvement of estimating by undertaking cost analysis of completed accounts and providing feedback as per the Cost Allocation Feedback process.
• Support pre- and post-contract procurement activities as appropriate.
• Provide support to estimating resources, offering guidance and advice on account scale/scope as required.
• Support the negotiation of all prices under existing contracts/framework agreements (including target costs) and fully participate in associated quantitative risk assessment and value management workshops.

Requirements

• Demonstrable experience in commercially managing investment projects.
• Good understanding of railway and construction industry forms of contract.
• Good understanding of the construction/railway industry.
• Good negotiation skills.
• Personal dedication to safety within the railway environment.

Qualifications

• Educated to degree standard in a related subject (desirable).
• Membership of a relevant professional institute or chartered status (desirable).
• Significant experience of working within a generalist commercial environment (desirable).
• Awareness of industry issues (desirable).

Skills

If you do not meet all the listed criteria, you are still encouraged to apply. Some skills may be learnt in role, and we will assess your application based on the best match.

Benefits

• Privileged staff travel: 75% discount on all leisure travel, including for family members.
• Subsidy of up to 75% on rail and underground season tickets for commuting.
• GWR Ticket Alliance: Heavily discounted all-day passes for you and up to 3 friends/family across the GWR network (48 passes per year).
• Benefits package including healthcare offers, cycle-to-work scheme, discounted healthcare club membership, and access to online shopping discounts.
• A range of pension schemes to choose from.
• 35-hour work week with enhanced family-friendly support.
• 5 days paid volunteering leave.
• 2 weeks paid reserve leave for the Armed Forces community.
• Opportunity to join PROUD, our reward and recognition scheme in Wales and Western region.

Pay

£43,588 to £53,167 per annum.

This role requires working in the office for at least 60% of the working week.