Meeting Dominic - the Procurement Team

Dominic Solesbury is a Category Manager within our Procurement Team, based at our office in Boston. He joined the Group back in September 2023 and works Monday to Friday. His role is hybrid, with most of his time spent in the office.

Here, we join Dominic during one of his Monday shifts as he gets a week up and running.

7.50am

My day begins with a 7.50am wake up, ready for the morning routine. I prep a packed lunch and get my little boy Max ready for a day with his grandparents. I grab a spot of breakfast before the journey to the office begins. A Monday in the Procurement Team is always a busy one and a day when all the team are usually in the office.

8.40am

I’m in the car and on the way to the office, which is only a 10-minute drive across town if Boston traffic allows!

8:59am

Coffee!

9.00am

The day begins with chatter among those in the office about any weekend activities, then the Monday meetings begin!

The Procurement Team, which consists of myself, Jemma, Michelle and Zoe, typically catch up slightly later at 11am.

In the meantime, I catch up on any emails received over the weekend as well as prep a pipeline of tasks for the week.

I look in the procurement inbox to chase suppliers for details so we can get them set up in Dynamics. This is the key process between a colleague submitting a new supplier form to us and them being able to raise a Purchase Order with the supplier within Dynamics.

We have to conduct several due diligence checks to ensure that we have a fully compliant audit trail.

10.00am

Time for another quick coffee as I’ve caught up with all my outstanding emails.

We’re currently in the early stages of procuring our cleaning services.  As part of this, we’re going out to market for early engagement to begin collating information on the current market processes and trends that will assist in forming the service and specification.

The questions within this early market engagement must be entered into a system which can be accessed by any supplier. I spend some time prepping this questionnaire within our systems ready for it to be released this afternoon.

11.00am

Time for the team meeting! We have a team meeting every Monday which Zoe, our Procurement Manager, leads to catch up on inflight projects currently in the works as well as covering in detail any inbox enquiries, supplier setups, training, meetings and everything else procurement-focused! We have a follow-up meeting every Thursday to ensure we’re on track with our tasks and all in sync as a team.

12.00pm

Following the meeting, I follow-up on tasks set from the meeting.

I need to collate scores and comments from our evaluation of our Grounds Maintenance project. We combine all scores and comments from our stakeholders who are reviewing the bids for this service into one document which then goes to a review. This is a very important part of the procurement process to help narrow down the winning bidders for the contract we’re tendering, alongside ensuring all the stakeholders agreeing on a final total score and comment to feedback to the successful and non-successful bidders.

1.00pm

Lunchtime!

2.00pm

It’s time to get back to collating the scores and comments as part of the Grounds Maintenance work.

3.00pm

An important part of our role is the legal regulations that surround procurement. Procurement in the UK is changing with a new set of regulations coming into effect in October 2024. I attend a webinar to develop my knowledge in preparation for the release of the full set of regulations that we’ll have to adhere to in October.

Following this, I’m straight back in the spreadsheets for evaluation scores and comments.

4.00pm

Now it’s time for a meeting with Alexis from ICT and Alice from Rent, Service Charge and Other Income to chase up an inflight consolidation of contracts. In procurement, we help colleagues ensure we’re protected within the contracts we head into or continue with and that we have the best price possible. Today is just a catch-up to try and drive a better price and some more support for one of our systems.

4.30pm

My last 45 minutes today is spent back in the procurement inbox picking up queries from colleagues and suppliers and ensuring all is tidy and ready to pick up tomorrow.

5:15pm

It’s time to head back home to see little Max and rest up before we go again tomorrow!