Senior Programme Manager / Programme Director

Job Title:  Senior Programme Manager / Programme Director

Global Grade:  GG14

Location:  Malvern / Farnborough with regular UK-wide travel

Role Type:  Permanent – Full Time

Role ID: 20301

Salary: £100k - c£120k depending on experience 

Role Purpose

A Senior Programme Manager to lead a critical and complex ISTAR Programme with the Ministry of Defence over a multi-year contract, reporting directly to the MD Digital Intelligence. The role would be a mentor among other Senior Programme Managers and add significant value from extensive experience in relevant domains.

Fully responsible and accountable to understand and deliver the project/programme vision, objectives and benefits. Lead and motivate Project Managers within the programme to ensure they are embedding health and safety and providing safe practices of work. Ensuring teams are collaborating effectively and working towards the same goal to deliver the outputs and/or outcomes delivering on time, within scope and budget, also adhering to all security requirements. Accountable for overall project/programme performance throughout the lifecycle, including baseline management and delivering within budget ensuring the relevant governance and assurance is undertaken (in line with the BMS and PLF) to deliver successfully to our customers.

Key Accountabilities

Integrated Planning – Shaping and structuring the project/programme to accomplish the vision by ensuring the related projects are equipped with the appropriate Project Management Plans (PMPs) and have secured the relevant resources to deliver within scope, quality, time and budget. Ensure resource capacity planning is in place, manage and co-ordinate dependencies to ensure issues are resolved early and ensure the programme benefits are identified and fully understood. Owning and defining the Programme Management Plan.

Budget & Cost Control - Working closely with the Portfolio Office to ensure programme controls are in place and accurate and timely performance information is available. Understand the importance of proactively managing project/programme performance throughout the project lifecycle. Seek opportunities for cost savings and identify ways to minimise and mitigate the threat of cost increases. Driving delivery excellence for revenue, profit and cash collection.

Risk & Issue Management – Proactively, identify and assess risks at assess risks at project/programme level, plan and implement responses to those risks and respond to issues that affect the project/programme. Record and monitor throughout the project lifecycle as per the BMS. Ensuring threats & opportunities are managed in accordance with best practice – overall accountable for using risk information to make informed decisions, escalating to senior leadership where appropriate. This may also include understanding wider business risks that may impact programme delivery. Ensuring that escalation routes are clear.

Reviews – Evaluate the performance of projects within the programme to understand the current status of the RAG using performance reporting. Challenge, guide and support Project Managers to achieve successful delivery. Potentially managing by exception (depending on volume of projects). Programme Managers may also be required to act as the “Delegated Authority” on other programmes which they do not manage and be required to “Chair” programme reviews. Reporting progress / status of programme at internal/external reviews to the IDTLs (UK Only), Customer and/or Partner.

Stakeholder Management – Fostering a collaborative approach. Engage, influence and collaborate with all stakeholders (internal, including Finance, Commercial, People, Enterprise Services, Portfolio Office, Technical & Supply Chain and external), ensuring on-going commitment. Utilising communication management to exchange relevant and timely information to support successful delivery and inform decision making. Understand customer expectations and ensure we are aligned by building customer relations, listen, act, be reliable, responsive, provide assurance, care, avoid complacency, and seek customer feedback. Focus on customer needs, ensuring that the intended benefits are delivered for both the customer and QinetiQ, whilst identifying opportunities in line with strategic objectives.

Commercial Management & Change Control - Lead pre and post contract discussions to shape project scope and collaboratively work with the Commercial function to understand QinetiQ's contractual rights and obligations. Set direction on commercial issues in order to minimise contractual risk and optimise financial reward. Understand project scope, taking action relating to change control internally (project performance) and externally to manage customer changes.

Quality Management - Work closely with the relevant Technical Leads. Ensure that project/programme outputs are delivered in accordance with the defined scope and contractual requirements, meet stakeholder expectations and are fit for purpose. Creating an overall Quality Management Plan (QMP) if applicable and ensuring the programme is compliant with internal processes, standards and regulations stipulated in the contract.

Requirements Management - Capture, assess and justify stakeholders wants and needs to satisfy the identified programme needs and benefits. 

Assurance – Attend Decision Point reviews and undertake a Delegated Authority role. Assure other projects/programmes within delegation. 

Business Development & On Contract Growth – Build and strengthen customer relationships in order to extend existing work (on-contract growth) or bring in new sales opportunities. Seek to understand customer needs and requirements and triage these effectively through Decision Point governance. Support bidding activities, including planning, estimating and writing, as required.

Programme Recovery – Support programmes of concern to establish a recovery plan. This may include a baselining activity.

Responsible and accountable for leading and delivery of high complexity projects and programmes.

QinetiQ values and behaviours must be acted upon at all times. Act in a professional manner with internal/external stakeholders. This involves and not limited to; communication, taking credible action, positive attitude and supporting others. Is an accountable leader who sets the tone for delivery and team discipline, taking responsibility for outcomes and activities. Drives change management using integrative thinking across the programme and business by being a visible role model for setting high standards and hold others to account. Inspires others to enable a high-performance culture. Thinks beyond programme boundaries to benefits and impacts. 

Key Competencies

•    Lifecycles
•    Governance Arrangements
•    Reviews
•    Assurance
•    Supply Chain/Procurement
•    Commercial
•    Stakeholder Engagement & Communication Management
•    Conflict Resolution
•    Leadership
•    Team Management
•    Requirements Management
•    Quality Management
•    Integrated Planning
•    Resource Management
•    Budgeting & Cost Control including Performance Management
•    Risk & Issue Management
•    Change Control
•    Resource Capacity Planning

Experience / Qualifications & Key Capabilities/Knowledge

• APM PMQ, ChPP, PMI PgMP or AIPM