Procurement and Contracts Apprenticeship

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  

• Team administration support using a variety of Microsoft Packages (including Word, Excel and PowerPoint) to compose and update documents  

• Manage procurement intranet site; including upload and management of documents  

• Provide procurement contributions to Finance newsletter   

• Annually coordinate updating of counter-party risk list  

• Insurance administration including yearly updates and endorsements and renewal cycle   

• Arrangement and facilitation of meetings- agendas, minutes and room bookings   

• Savings log management   

• Attend monthly Procurement team meetings and provide secretariat duties  

• Monitor the procurement department email address and insurance email address  

• Logging/filing final copies of contracts and related documents   

• File/organise best practice notes and articles  

• Deal with communications (mostly over the telephone and face to face) with other stakeholders in the business  

• Database Work  

• Maintain and report on the procurement contracts database   

• Maintain the Procurement Activity Plan (PAP)  

• Research  

• Research new procurement consortium frameworks and advise e.g. CCS, LUPC  

• Review procurement policies, strategy and guidance documents   

• Research legislative changes or best practice update 

• Systems  

• Procurement invoice processes and use of financial system E-FIN  

• Undertake credit checks and update notification facility   

• Assist and manage the roll out and training of an e-Signature platform  

• Maintain the e-Signature platform and provide ongoing support to HRP teams  

• Learn and support the team with the e-Tendering system for increased use in tender exercises  

• Tender Activity  

• Assist in researching potential tenderers  

• Prepare and coordinate signing of non-disclosure/confidentiality agreements   

• Prepare Invitation to Tenders (ITT), tender timetable and contract documents   

• Coordinate feedback from stakeholders on tender documents  

• Manage the issue of ITTs through the online tender management tool  

• Coordinate communications with tenderers throughout process   

• Organise site visit and question and answer schedules   

• Coordinate tenderer reference checks   

• Coordinate question and answer documents for tenderers and attend sessions  

• Coordinate and attend tender presentation meetings  

• Arrange and lead stakeholder meetings    

• Coordinate signing of contracts and internal approvals   

• Simple sourcing/best value exercises   

• Contract Related   

• Draft and coordinate signing of contract extensions and variations   

• Creating list of approved standard clauses for use within the procurement team  

• 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: 

• You must be 18 years old or over on 2nd September 2025.  
• Live in UK (resident in country role is based). 
• You must not have completed a degree or equivalent level qualification in the UK or elsewhere and not already be in full-time education. 
• Five GCSEs at grade C (or 4) or above, including English and  mathematics (or equivalent)