Who are we?
Thames Water is the UK’s largest water and wastewater company. We make a daily difference to our 15 million customers by supplying 2.6 billion litres of water through 32,000 km’s of pipes, to keep taps flowing and toilets flushing. We are an essential service and have operated throughout the Covid19 pandemic.
At Thames Water, every one of our actions, big and small, matters every day. Water is essential to daily life, and that means our business is always open.
What you will be doing
Are you an accomplished Programme Manager capable of developing a programme in a start-up business covering a diverse range of products and services?
This is a fantastic and rare opportunity to work for Ventures, an exciting new business created within the Thames Water group of companies, focused on delivering new economic, environmental, operational and public value to customers and shareholders through employing entrepreneurial thinking to identify and commercialise under-utilised assets and unrealised opportunities. Significant programme portfolio areas include energy, property and revenue-generating contracts.
The newly formed Programme Office is a central cross-functional team tasked with enabling the Ventures vision to become a reality, creating value with an entrepreneurial growth culture whilst leveraging Water regulatory experience and knowledge. This team play a key role in the overall implementation, support, challenge and operation of strategic and functional programmes with key accountability for:
- Strategic development and implementation
- Programme management
- Project gateway governance
- Commercial contracts, bidding and sharing services
- Continuous learning and development
- Delivery of specific cross-functional strategic projects
You will be a senior manager in the Programme Office who will be down to earth, sociable, warm and tactful with a great sense of humour - able to work calmly under pressure in a rapidly changing environment within the Thames Water group of companies.
This role will be varied and demanding but should allow you to gain new skills and experience. This is an opportunity for someone to have a real influence on our success by contributing to a positive, collaborative and committed working environment whilst being involved in the early stages of starting a new business.
The Programme Manager is a critical role in the creation of >£1bn of long-term value. This position will work alongside the functional business directors to develop and manage the overall programme delivery of a number of multi-disciplinary projects and programmes, providing challenge, assurance and management information needed to ensure benefits, progress, milestones and objectives are achieved in a safe and appropriate manner. This role will also be involved in ensuring that the components of the plan are consistent, comprehensive and in keeping with the agreed Ventures vision and strategy.
You will ideally be and be able to demonstrate:
- Educated to degree standard manager with a relevant technical degree and/or membership of a professional body preferable (e.g. APM / Practitioner MSP / Prince2 / P3O / PPSO / ITIL). A post-graduate business or project management qualification would be beneficial - relevant experience will be considered just as important though.
- Experienced in project & programme management (PMO delivery experience preferable)
- Worked in environments with high motivation, drive and commercial focus
- Technical awareness of the Ventures programme portfolio is desirable, but not essential
- Ability to analyse data and make decisions on partial information to maintain an optimised delivery programme
- Excellent project planning, estimating and forecasting skills with a working knowledge of best practice methodologies
- Strong influencing skills, highly organised with a strong drive and problem solver mentality
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills; persuasive presenter with senior stakeholders who may have different business imperatives
- Excellent knowledge of processes required to develop benefit driving initiatives from inception to delivery
- Fully competent at using appropriate programme management software
- A desire to make a difference and the ability to absorb and interpret high levels of information and data is essential. You will be highly organised with a professional, agile, and diligent nature
- Presentation and report writing skills, with the ability to produce material to a high quality and for Board/ Executive/ Director level audiences
- Financially capable of running a P&L, forecasting, balance sheet and establishing financial plans that link to strategy
What’s in it for you?
Our competitive salary & package includes a bonus, car allowance, an excellent contributory pension, 26 days holiday per year increasing to 30 with the length of service and a wider benefits scheme.
We’re proud of the positive ways of working we have adopted during the pandemic. We want to create a more flexible and dynamic environment so all our colleagues can thrive. For our office-based roles, we are moving to a hybrid approach where we will provide options around working from our offices, our operational sites and home dependent on role/team/individual. This will be discussed during the assessment process.
Thames Water is a unique, rewarding and diverse place to work. If you join our team, you’ll enjoy fast-tracked career opportunities, flexible working arrangements and unparalleled benefits. We’re also proud to be an equal opportunity employer, Stonewall Diversity Champion and Disability Confident Leader and we are a Times Top 50 Employer for Women.
You can find out more in our working for us, section of our website.