About the role
and about you
Historic Royal Palaces is a team of people who love and look after six of the most wonderful palaces in the world and their magnificent historical gardens.
We are recruiting for a Procurement & Contracts Apprentice, giving you a fantastic opportunity to grow and develop your skills whilst working at our historical sites.
To provide support to the Procurement & Contracts team at Historic Royal Palaces with respect to day to day procurement activity across all spend categories (excluding Building Works and Retail Goods for re-sale).
The role requires the provision of flexible levels of support to the Procurement team in respect of competitively tendering lower spends and general ad-hoc contract and commercial advice across all areas of the business, not all directly procurement related.
Maintenance of the contracts database, e-Signature platform, supplier due diligence and e-Tendering Portals are key aspects.
Whilst studying towards your apprenticeship you will also be:
Administration
1. Team administration support using a variety of Microsoft Packages (including Word, Excel and PowerPoint) to compose and update documents
2. Manage procurement intranet site; including upload and management of documents
3. Provide procurement contributions to Finance newsletter
4. Annually coordinate updating of counter-party risk list
5. Insurance administration including yearly updates and endorsements and renewal cycle
6. Arrangement and facilitation of meetings- agendas, minutes and room bookings
7. Savings log management
8. Attend monthly Procurement team meetings and provide secretariat duties
9. Monitor the procurement department email address and insurance email address
10. Logging/filing final copies of contracts and related documents
11. File/organise best practice notes and articles
12. Deal with communications (mostly over the telephone and face to face) with other stakeholders in the business
13. Database Work
14. Maintain and report on the procurement contracts database
15. Maintain the Procurement Activity Plan (PAP)
16. Research
17. Research new procurement consortium frameworks and advise e.g. CCS, LUPC
18. Review procurement policies, strategy and guidance documents
19. Research legislative changes or best practice update
20. Systems
21. Procurement invoice processes and use of financial system E-FIN
22. Undertake credit checks and update notification facility
23. Assist and manage the roll out and training of an e-Signature platform
24. Maintain the e-Signature platform and provide ongoing support to HRP teams
25. Learn and support the team with the e-Tendering system for increased use in tender exercises
26. Tender Activity
27. Assist in researching potential tenderers
28. Prepare and coordinate signing of non-disclosure/confidentiality agreements
29. Prepare Invitation to Tenders (ITT), tender timetable and contract documents
30. Coordinate feedback from stakeholders on tender documents
31. Manage the issue of ITTs through the online tender management tool
32. Coordinate communications with tenderers throughout process
33. Organise site visit and question and answer schedules
34. Coordinate tenderer reference checks
35. Coordinate question and answer documents for tenderers and attend sessions
36. Coordinate and attend tender presentation meetings
37. Arrange and lead stakeholder meetings
38. Coordinate signing of contracts and internal approvals
39. Simple sourcing/best value exercises
40. Contract Related
41. Draft and coordinate signing of contract extensions and variations
42. Creating list of approved standard clauses for use within the procurement team
43. Arrangement of music and copyright licensing annually
More than anything we are looking for potential, but, as this Apprenticeship starts at level 4 we do have a few eligibility requirements:
44. You must be 18 years old or over on 2nd September 2025.
45. Live in UK (resident in country role is based).
46. You must not have completed a degree or equivalent level qualification in the UK or elsewhere and not already be in full-time education.
47. Five GCSEs at grade C (or 4) or above, including English and mathematics (or equivalent)