Christopher Black
Christopher Black has over 20 years of NHS procurement experience covering all aspects of procurement from procurement systems, materials management, operational procurement through to contracts.
Christopher’s career began in the north of England helping to implement and deliver procurement systems for Harrogate & District NHS Foundation Trust, York & Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation and Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust. Following this experience, Christopher moved to London to begin working at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust for over ten year carrying out several procurement roles including e-Commerce Manager, Operational Manager with his final role at the Trust being the Senior Category Manager for the Corporate Division.
The systems roles included successfully designing, implementing and operating procurement systems to enable and ease purchasing functions for each division within the Trust ranging from consumables purchasing, materials management, cabinet systems and Theatres manual top ups. The operational role consisted of managing a team of six Buyers with achievements including zero outstanding requisitions, zero unpaid invoices and staff development enabling the team to provide training regarding SFIs, PCR 2015 and in-house procurement systems. Christopher’s final role at the Trust led him to running high value, complex end to end procurements for the Corporate Division successfully delivering Non-Emergency and Renal Transport, Bank and Agency, Soft FM through to ICT End of Life and Network Infrastructure tenders.
In 2020, Christopher joined the NHS London Procurement Partnership (NHS LPP) as a Procurement Specialist but was quickly promoted to a Systems Enabler with this role successfully delivering the implementation of a new DHSC e-Tendering System. As this was a fixed term contract, Christopher then joined Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust on a permanent basis as a Senior Sourcing Manager covering tenders such as Linen & Laundry, Enteral Feeds and Bed Management. Christopher re-joined NHS LPP in 2023 on a permanent basis as a Senior Category Manager for the Digital Health team running EPR procurements on behalf of the Frontline Digitisation programme. After successfully delivering a few of these procurements, Christopher moved into his current role as a Senior Category Manager for the Clinical Digital Solutions team in which he puts together frameworks for public sector use and provides consultancy to NHS organisations on procurement activity, knowledge and market insight.
As an NHS Innovator Accelerator Mentor, Christopher uses this wealth of experience to assist Fellows on all procurement matters in an open-minded, friendly and approachable manner. Christopher was recently shortlisted for the HCSA Awards in Procurement Excellence.