About the job

Job summary

Are you a Project Delivery, Business Change, Strategy, Economic or Evaluation professional, with a passion for benefits management looking to develop your skills in a new role? We may have the perfect opportunity for you!

UK Space Command, is the Defence lead for space operations, space workforce, and space capability. A Joint Command staffed by personnel from the Royal Navy, British Army, Royal Air Force, Civil Service, contractors and alongside our allies and partners, we are at the forefront of activity to make space safe, secure, and sustainable for all generations.

Key to realising our ambitions is effective benefits management practices which enables the identification and management of benefits being realised from the portfolio and whilst ensuring the best available use of resources.

The Benefits Lead will be responsible for embedding a robust and consistent approach to benefits management, ensuring our choices in change initiatives help deliver our contribution to the Defence Space Strategy, and working collaboratively with teams to help identify, measure and track the impact of these activities.

This role offers the opportunity to build on your existing Benefits Management knowledge and expertise, champion the use of good practice methodology, and provide expert advice in an exciting yet encouraging environment!

This position is advertised at 37 hours per week.

We operate a hybrid working environment and the expectation is that you will spend a minimum of 60% of your working time in an office or out on official business. Initially, you will be expected to attend more frequently to familiarise yourself with the site, the team and
the position you will be working on in more detail. 

Job description

As Benefits Manager your role will work with the Portfolio and Programme Teams to proactively identify, quantify, and track the realisation of benefits used to justify investment in the project/programme. You will also ensure a ‘fit for purpose’ approach to benefits measurement and realisation is used to provide assurance that the benefits identified can be achieved. Day to day your role will encompass:

• Defining and drafting the Space Command Benefits Management Strategy taking into account the wider organisation methodology championing it across our community.
• Establishing and maintaining the Portfolio Benefits Realisation Plan including change control, and the mechanism for the tracking and reporting of benefits through the project lifecycle and into realisation.
• Coordinating Benefits Mapping activities including mapping benefits, applying your experience to provide challenge and ensure assumptions and dependencies are robust.
• Supporting project and programme managers in preparing and updating the benefits elements of investment cases.
• Working with programme teams and wider portfolio office team members to ensure benefits are identified, understood, owned and maximised.
• Preparing and delivering Portfolio Benefits reviews and reporting.
• Undertaking training and development as part of your continued professional development journey
  role. 

Person specification

As our benefits management lead you will therefore require credibility and professional expertise to help build benefits maturity across the organisation. We are looking for a colleague who can:

Professional Skills and Experience

Essential

• Project Delivery: demonstrate experience of working within complex, multi-disciplinary project, programme, portfolio and/or change environments that use agile and waterfall delivery methods.
  
• Project Delivery: Knowledge and application of portfolio, programme and project methodologies (e.g. MOP, MSP, PRinCE 2, Agile).
  
• Benefits Management: demonstrate expertise, experience and practical application of the principles and practices of Benefits Management, including the tools and techniques that underpin these.

Desirable

• APMG Managing Benefits or equivalent experience
• A recognised PD qualification including, Managing Successful Programmes (MSP), or APM Project Fundamentals, Management of Portfolios.
• Knowledge and experience of the Defence and/or Space. 

Personal Attributes & Skills

• Have the ability to operate independently and effectively in an environment of ambiguity and uncertainty.
• Have excellent communication skills – honest, concise, clear and solution focused, whilst choosing appropriate styles to maximise understanding and impact.
• Confident user of the Microsoft Office IT and data analysis/project/visualisation/presentation tools (such as Excel, Project and PowerPoint). 
• Have the ability to adapt to changing circumstances and adverse situations whilst remaining calm, reassuring others and maintaining performance.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £43,080, Ministry of Defence contributes £11,631 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.

As part of the application process you will be asked to complete a CV  and personal statement. The sift will consider both the CV and Personal Statement. (Information on how to complete your CV and Personal Statement can be found at A Guide to Civil Service Success Profiles , Civil Service Careers (civil-service-careers.gov.uk))

CV: Candidates will be required to provide CV details to include job history; qualification details and previous skills and experience.  

Personal Statement: Candidates will be required to provide a statement of suitability. (Word count 1,000)  

Candidates shortlisted will be invited to an interview which will be a mixture of Technical (Project Delivery Capability Framework) and Behaviour (Success Profiles: Behaviours) based questions. 

At Interview, you will be assessed against the following Success Profiles Behaviours:

• Leadership
• Delivering at Pace
• Changing and Improving

At Interview, you will be assessed against the following Technical Skills:

• Project Delivery Capability Framework - 18 Benefits Management
• Project Delivery Capability Framework - 13 Stakeholder Engagement

The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equality of opportunity. There is a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria. If you need to advise us that you need additional help or reasonable adjustments for the recruitment process, please contact: DBSCivPers-Resourcingteam3@mod.gov.uk 

As a result of the changes to the UK immigration rules which came into effect on 1 January 2021, the Ministry of Defence will only offer sponsorship for a skilled worker visa under the points based system, where a role has been deemed to be business critical.

The role currently being advertised has not been assessed as business critical and is therefore NOT open to applications from those who will require sponsorship under the points based system. Should you apply for this role and be found to require sponsorship, your application will be rejected and any provisional offer of employment withdrawn.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window). People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

Open to UK nationals only.

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria. The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.