Location: Newcastle upon Tyne
Employment Type: Permanent, Full-Time
Sector: Construction / Building / Civils
Salary: £38k-£40k
The Role
We are looking to recruit an experienced Company Buyer with a strong building/construction bias to join a well-established business in Newcastle.
The Company Buyer will be responsible for managing procurement activities across the business, ensuring materials, goods and services are sourced competitively and delivered in line with operational requirements.
This is a varied role requiring strong supplier management, commercial awareness and the ability to work closely with site teams to understand requirements and ensure continuity of supply.
Key Responsibilities
- Purchase goods, building materials and services to meet operational and project requirements.
- Ensure purchasing decisions take into account price, quality, availability and delivery timescales.
- Receive and process requisitions for building and civil engineering materials.
- Prepare and issue enquiry packages to suppliers.
- Undertake quotation analysis and evaluation to identify the most commercially suitable options.
- Build, maintain and manage strong supplier relationships.
- Assess supplier performance and undertake regular reviews to ensure quality and contract compliance.
- Identify supplier performance issues and support improvement activities.
- Manage and support the Assistant Buyer, delegating workloads and providing guidance and training.
- Liaise closely with site teams to obtain accurate information and produce appropriate procurement enquiries.
- Support product and material change requests and assess the potential impact on supply and capacity.
- Monitor market and supply chain developments that could affect the availability or cost of materials.
- Highlight procurement risks that may impact project programmes, costs or operational delivery.
- Attend internal meetings and provide updates on procurement activity, supplier performance and potential risks.
- Maintain accurate purchasing records and correspondence.
- Apply a commercially focused approach to procurement, maintaining strong control over expenditure.
Essential Experience
- Previous experience within a Buyer, Construction Buyer, Materials Buyer or Procurement position.
- Strong knowledge of building materials and construction-related products.
- Experience purchasing across multiple product categories.
- Ability to liaise effectively with construction/site teams and extract the information required to produce accurate enquiries.
- Experience obtaining and evaluating supplier quotations.
- Strong commercial awareness with a focus on controlling costs and achieving value for money.
- Good analytical and numerical skills.
- Excellent attention to detail.
- Confident supplier management and negotiation skills.
- Strong organisational skills with the ability to manage multiple enquiries and priorities.
- Good working knowledge of Microsoft Excel.
- Strong Microsoft Outlook and general MS Office skills, with the ability to manage a high volume of email enquiries and correspondence.