Programme Manager Candidate Information Pack
Contents
4
About the GDST
6
The GDST Estate
8
The Estates Vision
9
The Estates Programme
10
The Capital Investment Programme
12
The Role
14
Person Specification
20
Application process
2
About the GDST
The Girls’ Day School Trust is the UK’s leading family of independent girls’ schools. In all of our schools, academic excellence is a given – at the GDST we develop character beyond the curriculum. The GDST is a charitable trust which owns and operates 25 schools across England and Wales. Our schools are mainly girls only, with the GDST ethos to ‘reach as many girls as possible’ permeating everything we do. Most schools are Junior, Senior and sixth form, with some having nurseries as well; one of the school’s remains a boarding school. The Council of Trustees oversee the strategic direction of the Trust, with an Executive Board who run the day to day operations, based at the Trust Office in Victoria, London. The Heads of the schools report into the Chief Executive, and all have Directors of Finance and Operation (DFO’s) who help to run the 23 schools and 2 academies. The GDST owns most of its property freehold, although there are certain leasehold landholdings, plus other property retained for investment purposes. There is also an outward bound centre in north Wales. Each of the schools and academies are run separately, with central services including Estates, Finance, HR and IT located in Trust Office. This is also where the strategic Education and Innovation strategy is set, along with most of the teacher and staff training, reinforcing the GDST ethos.
4
The GDST Estate
A list of the main schools and sites are given below:
Our Estate is diverse, both geographically and chronologically, with buildings dating back to the 1800’s up to the present day. A significant number of the older properties are listed or locally listed and sit in Conservation Areas.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
Blackheath High School, London Brighton and Hove High School Bromley High School, London
Many of our properties are converted residential buildings, others are purpose built as schools.
Croydon High School
Howells School, Llandaff, Cardiff
All of our current schools are in England and Wales and amount to over 200 buildings, predominantly owned by the GDST, plus also Trust Office in central London. Most of our properties are occupied for educational purposes, although some sites also have residential accommodation for staff, in addition to the one boarding school in Bath. Further investment properties are let out to external occupiers.
Kensington Prep School
Newcastle High School for Girls Northampton High School
9. Northwood College, Middlesex 10. Norwich High School for Girls 11. Nottingham Girls High School 12. Notting Hill & Ealing High School 13. Oxford High School 14. Portsmouth High School 15. Putney High School
16. Royal High School, Bath 17. Sheffield High School 18. Shrewsbury High School
19. South Hampstead High School, London 20. Streatham & Clapham High School, London 21. Sutton High School 22. Sydenham High School 23. Wimbledon High School 24. Belvedere Academy, Liverpool 25. Birkenhead High School Academy, Birkenhead
6
The Estates Vision
The Estates Programme
Our mission is to provide an integrated customer service, providing strategic leadership and well as technical support and advice across the Estate, ensuring consistency of approach and critically ensuring compliance with all statutory requirements across the Estate at all times. The Estates department under the Director of Estates, hold the delegated responsibility from the Trustees to assure, maintain, enhance and develop the estate to ensure it is fit for purpose to provide innovative education and learning facilities as well as the breadth of functions that allow the schools to operate, including external spaces and sports fields. Our primary aim is to keep our Estate safe for our students, staff, visitors as well as members of the public. The Estates department run a continuous programme of maintenance programmes, minor works, refurbishment and new build projects, varying in scale from £100,000 to over £20 million. Each school also has a delegated maintenance budget, directly managed by the school, used to address minor repair and maintenance works. The Estates team act as the central Technical and Trusted Advisors for the schools, supporting them in all Estates related decision making, scoping and delivery.
Our Estate is the physical representation of the schools and the GDST; with the Estates Strategy a reflection of the Trust’s strategic vision. It is the responsibility of the Estates department to deliver against this context. Although primarily for educational purposes, our schools host numerous events for the school community plus for the wider public benefit within their local communities. We aim to provide an appropriate quality of environments, infrastructure and buildings to support the educational and recreational needs of our schools; working to deliver sustainable and innovative spaces for our students to enjoy, whilst enhancing the GDST’s reputation as a leader in girls education. The GDST is committed to ensuring all of its operations are as sustainable as possible. As such, it is now certified a carbon neutral organisation and currently progressing towards a carbon zero strategy, driven primarily by the Estates team. Sustainability is embedded in all property work, as the estate is evolved towards carbon net zero both in construction and operation.’
8
The Capital Investment Programme
The GDST invests over £30 million annually in capital programmes across the Estate; based on a prioritisation of compliance and condition related works, educational need, as well as improvement and expansion of the Estate, as appropriate.
Examples of projects recently completed include:
• A new STEAM tower and dining room at Wimbledon High School; • A new Science and Arts facility at Oxford High School; • An extension to Bromley High School; • The refurbishment of Waterlow Hall at South Hampstead High School into a high quality performance space.
Significant projects currently underway include:
• A new integrated carbon net zero designed Junior School building at Notting Hill & Ealing High School, (see CGI images on the next page); • A programme of works at Sutton High School including an extension to the junior school, new refectory and improvements to sports facilities, which aims to target net zero carbon; • Major external refurbishment of Howell’s School listed buildings; • Proposed new sixth form and design technology hub under development; • Fire compliance works programme for all schools. In parallel, there are a significant number of refurbishment and improvement works across the Estate, infrastructure works and maintenance programmes covering both fabric and mechanical and electrical works.
10
Programme Manager - Estates
Role:
Key Responsibilities • Programme and project management including regular reporting, escalation of any concerns, adjusting programme and responsible for presenting updates • Responsible for making changes to programmes / timescales and resource recommendations in line with construction progress • Contributing to the organisation and effectiveness of Executive Board, Executive Council and other bodies as required • Responsible for maintaining, updating, and reporting against the risk register for the department (and contributing to engagement on strategic risks) • Support post project evaluations / debriefs with project managers including capturing lessons learned and benefits realisation opportunities • Support development of training programmes for the team, including sourcing suppliers, keeping training logs and supporting the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) on training profiles for the team • Work with the compliance manager to support the rollout of best practice examples, data management and tracking Key Relationships • Head of PMO • Director of Estates, Head of Estate Management, & Head of Capital, Compliance Manager, Head of Infrastructure & Sustainability • Project & Estate Managers • Directors of Finance & Operations (DFO’s) • Finance, Legal and other members of the Trust Office Management team • School Heads, Directors of Finance & Operations (DFO’s) • Outsourced service providers (e.g. professional consultants, contractors etc.) • Technologyforge / TF-Cloud supplier team
Programme Manager - Estates
Location:
10 Bressenden Place, Westminster, London SW1E 5AE
Accountable to:
Head of PMO
Grade:
Grade 4
Job Purpose / Background The Estates Department acts on behalf of the Trust and deals with all property related matters to ensure that the Trusts interests and its estate is developed and maintained to agreed standards. The estate consists of 23 schools, two academies and the Trust Office based in Victoria. Reporting to the Head of Programme Management Office (PMO) the postholder is responsible for supporting all aspects of the estates programme and coordination, ranging from maintenance projects to major capital development projects. The programmes are extensive, and the role includes responsibility for preparing reports, tracking the projects against milestones and supporting the specialist project managers with information and governance support. The postholder will independently manage smaller scale projects (e.g., a trustwide initiative) with accountability for delivery of the project. Each of these initiatives will have an appointed subject matter expert to support the project. Accountabilities • As a key member of the PMO, support all functions of the Estates team to ensure successful delivery of projects • Accountable for the delivery of discreet trustwide projects with specialist advice and guidance • Supporting all aspects of the PMO, ranging from governance, approvals and reporting to data management opportunities • Act as a central point of information for oversight of estates projects, including developing and maintaining an annual cycle of activity
12
Person Specification
Person Specification
• Ability to generate and maintain customer confidence in you as an individual and in the team as a whole. • Approach of proactively taking ownership of a situation and seeing it through to a successful conclusion • Excellent communication and presentation skills • Ability to work effectively and flexibly on own initiative under pressure • Excellent negotiating skills • Ability to motivate staff and to manage collaborative team working • Ability to create good working relationships both internally and externally and manage stakeholders effectively • Ability to work outside normal office hours as required • Able to work with, structure and prioritise large amounts of project information and work with the Asset Management database • Ability to challenge in a constructive manner • Ability to develop creative solutions to difficult issues • Positive, ‘can-do’ attitude • Open and diplomatic approach • Team Player Qualifications / Training Education/ Training Essential: • A-levels, or equivalent Desirable: • Degree or equivalent experience
14
Desirable: • Proven working experience as a database support technician, data analyst or PMO support role • Technical expertise regarding the use and development of an Asset or Estate Management database. • Strong knowledge of, and experience with, cloud-based systems, SAP / Oracle databases, and reporting packages. • Knowledge of statistics and experience of analysing datasets • Strong analytical skills with the ability to collect, organize, analyse, and disseminate significant amounts of information with attention to detail and accuracy • Adept at queries, report writing and presenting findings • Understanding of basic Project Management principles and techniques • Undertake regular analyses and make judgements on large amounts of data; identify key milestones and risks and support the resolution of problems and failures from a range of options. • Analyse complex data, reports and interpret statistical, including financial data and suggest suitable options.
Relevant Experience: Essential: • Experience in a data or information management • Experience of reporting and performance management • Demonstrable experience of managing projects Desirable: • Experience in estates & facilities team or equivalent experience • Experience of Asset or Estate Management Systems • Experience of working within a Project Management Office • Understanding of the education sector and particularly the furthering of Girls education. • Experience of working with multiple projects or assets across a multi-site Estate • Experience working with SAP / ORACLE or Cloud-Based Databases Relevant Skills / Aptitudes: Essential: • Excellent written and oral communication skills • Attention to detail • The ability to manage process and content • Ability to effectively manage time and meet deadlines whilst under pressure • Ability to effectively use Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint, particularly for production of reports and presentations • Strong verbal and numerical reasoning ability • Strong analytical and research skills, able to produce technical content and organise material • Ability to work with large amounts of data and information • Maintain effective communications systems and processes both within the PMO and with internal and external stakeholders.
16
General Requirements
All staff are expected to: • Work towards and support the Trust vision and current objectives outlined in the GDST Strategic Development Plan. • Work within the Trust’s health and safety policy to ensure a safe working environment for staff and visitors. • Work within the GDST’s Diversity Policy to promote equality of opportunity for all staff, both current and prospective. • Maintain high professional standards of attendance, punctuality, appearance, conduct and positive, courteous relations with Trust Office colleagues, schools staff, external contacts and visitors. • Engage actively in the performance review process, and training and development opportunities available. • Adhere to policies as set out in the GDST Council Regulations, Notes of Guidance and GDST circulars. • Undertake other reasonable duties related to the job purpose required from time to time. Other Requirements
Essential: • Enhanced DBS check. Circumstances
• Full driving licence and daily use of car for work • Travel in support of the duties of the role • Stay overnight in support of the duties of the role • Work flexibly as required in support of the duties of the role Review and Amendment
This job description should be seen as enabling rather than restrictive and will be subject to regular review.
18
For a confidential conversation please contact our advisors Nicholas Coppard and Leena Lais of The Management Recruitment Group on 020 3962 9900.
Applications should consist of a comprehensive CV (of not more than 4 pages) and a covering letter (of not more than 2 pages).
Applications should be sent to nicholas.coppard@mrgpeople.co.uk and leena.lais@mrgpeople.co.uk
The closing date for applications is 9th July 2023.
Interviews will be held on w/c 31st July 2023.
Page 1 Page 2-3 Page 4-5 Page 6-7 Page 8-9 Page 10-11 Page 12-13 Page 14-15 Page 16-17 Page 18-19 Page 20Made with FlippingBook Online newsletter maker