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We’ve been writing over the past year or so about the Public Spend Forum (PSF) initiative – the public procurement workforce competency model. As part of our commitment to driving long-term, sustainable change in public procurement, we worked with the Volcker Alliance to develop a public procurement workforce competency model that would serve to guide all workforce development activities within the public sector.*

So we were interested to see in the UK that the Cabinet Office’s Government Commercial Function has just published an interactive career tool to be used by Commercial professionals across government to help plan and develop their career paths; to move into careers or get onto the next level of an existing one.

It is called the Commercial Career Framework and “defines the common role types and corresponding capabilities which exist within the Government Commercial Function and has been designed to promote consistency of expectations across government. It works by empowering individuals to identify possible career paths and understand which capabilities they should develop in order to follow each of these paths, as well as how to tailor their development towards achieving their career aspirations.”

It’s not new – the last one was compiled a couple of years ago – the Commercial Profession Skills and Competency Framework – but this one does appear to be more ‘complete.’ The tool takes the form of an interactive PowerPoint which is very navigable. You can jump to sections to get a better understanding of roles within the Commercial Function, review the capabilities needed to perform them, and explore ways to move within and out of the function.

Jobs are sorted into ‘pillars:’ Strategy & Policy Development, Business Needs & Sourcing, Procurement, Contract & Supplier Management and Cross Pillar. Each contains various roles within them. It is quite clear in how it describes what is involved for each role, the competencies required to perform it, how to get them and where they can lead. It also gives an indication of the levels of ‘mastery’ required for both the hard and soft skills needed. Because this covers a huge range of competencies, in detail, the document is by default very large, but you can jump to the sections that interest you very easily.

The tool also includes ‘case studies’ from people in the jobs themselves who talk about their careers, how they got there, what they enjoy and so on, which we found particularly useful. So quite an impressive and comprehensive tool we think, which drills down into every echelon of the roles within the commercial function.

You can access the tool here.

 

*And since that version of the US model published in 2016, we have collaborated with public procurement leaders, practitioners and academics from all levels of government to develop Public Procurement Workforce Competency Model Version 2.0.

 

 

 

 

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