GS Associates, Inc. – Newburyport, MA

Job Summary

We are a hospitality procurement company based in Newburyport, MA. At GS Associates, Inc., we purchase furnishings and supplies for hotels, resorts, clubs and restaurants, senior living facilities, and specialty properties all over the world. Our work is project oriented, fast paced, dynamic, and deadline focused. The two pillars of project management services are timely and accurate information to the entire project team and suppliers, and appropriate consultation to our client.
As a small business we go through periods of both growth and stabilization. We are constantly developing our organization, moving to better our practices and culture. We currently have an opening for a new purchasing coordinator to join out our team

Qualifications and Skills

The ideal candidate will be able to undertake a variety of roles and work diligently under pressure. We expect him or her to have, or be enthusiastic about developing, the following attributes:

  • Amiable personality.
  • High degree of attention to detail.
  • Confident about incorporating new and effective ways to achieve better results.
  • Ability to manage and work effectively within a team.
  • Ability to work well with limited supervision.
  • A professional level of verbal and written communication skills, as well as discretion.
  • Excellent organizational and time management skills.
  • Analytical abilities and aptitude in problem-solving and prioritization.
  • Familiarity and comfort with modern office applications such as Outlook, Excel, and enterprise-level software.

Responsibilities and Duties

  • Effective management of your project orders and support team.
    • Run regular stand-up meeting with your pod.
    • Create an environment of mutual respect, responsibility, teaching and support for you and your team to forward the experience and skillsets of everyone.
    • Appropriate delegation to your internal team of assignments and their deadlines, stepping in where necessary to ensure accurate and timely completion.
  • Oversee major project milestones.
    • Audit scope after certain critical milestones such as processing and drafting.
    • Provide analysis and consultation for budget, schedule, and buyout issues.
  • With the supervision of the Project Manager, run regular project calls with core external project team (client, design, operations).
    • Explicit involvement in high priority orders, typically the major custom commodities.
  • Be aware of critical/problem scope escalated from support, with immediate transparency and escalation of mistakes and/or project-threat-level issues to the Manager.
  • Eventual, full competence with our Kira purchasing software.
  • Other project and organization duties not explicitly defined, as needed.
    *For a more detailed description of our company’s policies and procedures for a project coordinator role see appendix A: Project Coordinator Role.

Job Type: Full-time
Schedule: 8:30am-5pm

Salary and Benefits

$40,000 – 50,000 per year (to be determined in negotiations and solidified in subsequent offer letter)

  • Two weeks paid vacation earned at .8 days per month for every month of employment. All accrued vacation days must be used within the calendar year as there is no carry over provision.
  • Normal Holidays (8 per year)
  • Six sick/personal days accrued at 1 every two months with no carry over provision for unused days.
  • Participation in the employee 401 K program immediately eligible.
  • Profit sharing which is discretionary and requires employment of one calendar year.
  • Bonuses at the discretion of the owners.

Ideal Experience:

  • 2 years combined proven working experience in hospitality design or procurement.
  • 1 years of experience in a client-facing role.
  • Knowledge of hospitality sourcing and procurement techniques and design language.

Appendix A: Project Coordinator Role

The project coordinator is responsible for being the expert on a projects orders and statuses, as well for preparing and reviewing project reports and milestones with the project manager to ensure on-time delivery of scope.

Reporting

Regular, accurate and digestible reporting to the external project team (and your project manager, as needed)

  • Budget
  • Cashflow
  • Bidding
  • Approval
  • Expediting
  • Shipping
  • Load schedule

Correspondence

Excellent communication with a focus on clear conveyance of project needs and expectations to the following parties:

  • Support Leader
  • Manager
  • Director
  • Client
  • Design
  • Operator
  • General Contractor
  • Vendors
  • Freight Forwarder

Procurement

  • Start-up
    • Set-up/Build-out
      • Review project documentation such as layouts and specifications and administrate the proper set up of areas, room configurations, zones in Kira
    • Pre-bidding
      • Audit quantification exercises, specification accuracy and typing after processing by your team.
      • Work with your manager and peers to determine the best-possible estimations of fabric quantities and other critical path items.
      • Work with the project manager and co-workers to develop source-list for bidding for FFE and Warehousing/Installation.
  • Bidding
    • Bid Release
      • Administrate the release of RFQ documentation for FFE and Warehousing/Installation in a timely fashion.
    • Quotation Review and Analysis
      • Review quotations/bids with the manager and present results to external project team with proper analysis and consultation
        • Develop review and present quality bid and budget reports as necessary for the proper fulfillment of our role as consultants.
  • Buy-Out
    • Consultation for the proper acquisition and distribution of project funding in accordance with project schedule.
      • Reporting and analysis for budgeting, cost projection, and development and timely submission of cash flow or submittal-based funding documentation.
    • Administrate the drafting and audit of purchase orders to awarded vendors, including confirmation of ship-to addresses.
    • Administrate release of purchase orders contingent with the desired approval procedures of the client.
    • Administrate the regular upkeep of all orders by your team to ensure timely delivery or the immediate addressing of blockers to timely delivery, with an emphasis on deposit payments and approval materials.
      • Ensure the timely collection and processing of invoice, approval and shipping documentation, critical dates and their impact on deadlines.
  • Installation
    • Schedule installers or coordinate with owners’ staff for installation of furnishings
    • Develop and maintain a Load schedule, if necessary.
    • Punch list administration, if necessary.
  • Closeout
    • Administrate the collection of closeout documentation.

Appendix B: Upkeeps

  • Coordinator
    • Daily
      • Standup with Manager:
        • What did you work on yesterday? E.G. “I’ve sent out for upkeep details on projects X and Y, I’ve entered upkeep details I’d received for projects A and B.”
        • What will you be working on today? E.G. “Right now invoices for Project Y are the main priority. I’ve also started processing a spec package for project K”
        • What are you blocked by? E.G. “I need an answer to a question for my quantifying assignment on project B to be able to proceed”
          • If the blocker can be removed with a quick discussion (called a “parking lot”) after everyone has gone, then anyone who is needed can stay while everyone else leaves the call.
          • If the blocker isn’t quickly resolved by people in the call then the Support Leader can help coordinate a Teams call with whomever in the company can help unblock you.
        • Pick someone to go next
        • Parking Lots (if necessary). Once everyone has done their Standup for the day select people can stick around to have a call to unblock each other. There can be multiple parking lots but they should be only a few minutes each or it implies the issue should be a separately scheduled discussion from the standup.
      • Payments
        • Open every project and scan the PO list for orders that need payments.
      • Open and scan every project for new issues/delays/pitfalls, etc.
        • Notify manager (via Teams) of issues that might impact the ability of the project to open and operate on time
      • Emails
      • Order-level Assignments/tasks
        • Think about required assignments either work on them yourself or if appropriate advise the support leader for them to delegate to the support team.
        • Review completed assignments submitted by the support team.
      • EOD Close or as needed advise manager of issues, give direction to Support Leader or Support.
    • Weekly
      • Budget/funding review. (Individually, but can bring in Manager for oversite/consultation if necessary)
      • Forecasting
        • Open all projects, review expediting updates along with current market conditions, supply chain issues, etc and enter or update forecasting for scope (batch editable) as appropriate.
      • Project call preparation/report review. Pull weekly reports (expediting/approval/budget/other) the day project calls with external teams.
        • Review individually and record feedback for the quality control meeting with the Support Leader.
        • Review with Manager day before external project call (10 minutes)
          • Identify main concerns/items of attention from the week (try to keep it to 6 or less)
          • Updates to major/critical scope.
          • Prepare and send reports, agenda and summary of main issues via email to the external team.
      • External project call. Have knowledge of order statuses (pricing, issued, payment, production, shipment, etc.), especially essential orders. Make sure each party has a clear understanding of priorities for the next week.
      • Quality control meeting with the Support Leader. Screen share the assignments list
        • Get context from coordinators to be able to properly distribute and prioritize various (non-upkeep) assignments.
        • Go over unresolved quality control issues (these should not be discovered/shared in this meeting, just further discussed if better in a group setting)
      • Friday teaching with manager for escalated questions/issues from the week.
    • Monthly
      • Closeout progress review
      • Company ideas meeting.
      • Complete work distribution form.
    • Quarterly
      • Individual performance review with Manager and COO. What went well. What didn’t go well. What/how to improve.

 

Interested candidates, please reply to: zac.sarff@gsa-inc.com

Company Name: GS Associates, Inc.
Contact Email: zac.sarff@gsa-inc.com
City: Newburyport
State: MA
Country: USA
Job Title: Project Coordinator
Job Type: Full-Time
Must Manage Others: No
Date Published: November 8, 2023