About the job

Job summary

The Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) plays a vital role in supporting our Armed Forces by building, maintaining, and servicing the infrastructure that the people who serve our country need to live, work, train, and deploy on operations. DIO is responsible for managing £3.25billion annual investment into the defence estate in the UK and overseas, and manages an estate valued at circa £35billion.

This includes approximately 50,000 homes in the UK and abroad which form the Service Family Accommodation (SFA) estate, for which DIO is directly responsible from a management and budgetary perspective.

These roles are responsible for providing strategic and operational leadership across DIO and industry partner teams ensuring service delivery to families and successful delivery of investments in improvements to the estate. You will be responsible for shaping where to invest with internal and external stakeholders to ensure various improvements and upgrades to the estate and service family accommodation.

Overall the postholders will be responsible for setting the long term strategic direction and for delivering a service to families. Due to the footprint of DIO, employees are split between the North and South regions and each postholder is responsible for a region

Job description

Key Responsibilities

Leadership and Management

• Responsible and accountable for Team performance, conduct and development. Developing and communicating clear service deliverable goals, directing performance and promoting continuous improvement. Develop training strategies and implementing solutions in accordance with the DIO Leadership Code.
• Lead the Team in an open and transparent manner, ensuring individuals have the appropriate levels of delegation and effectively monitoring and managing delegations in line with departmental levels/controls and standards.
• Responsible for demonstrating a personal commitment to DIO's Leadership Code and enabling and supporting the Team to successfully demonstrate the activities within the DIO's Leadership Code.
• Accountable for ensuring the Team are appropriately staffed with the right skills and capabilities to deliver the DIO outputs in accordance with the DIO Command Plan, with objectives set for all staff, and reporting completed as per the timescales mandated for each grade. Ensuring that individuals are appropriately rewarded in accordance with the departmental guidance.
• Developing an environment where a High Performing Team culture can develop, promoting diversity and inclusion across the organisation.
• Supporting and maintain an effective working culture that provide employee engagement.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Accountable for the effective engagement of DIO teams, Single Services, external consultants and Industry Partners on the strategy.
• Work as part of DIO Accommodation senior team to ensure that implications of a long term strategy are fully understood and integrated.
• Responsible for effectively managing and coordinating communication to the public and press on matters relating to the strategy which may impact the reputation and integrity of the organisation.
• Responsible for engaging and managing the Industry Partners (IP) in delivering their commitments contractually, including all and any complaints.
• Internal DIO engagement with commercial and financial counterparts.

Strategy Development

• Develop a strategy on long term programmatic strategy for Defence Housing Estate. Long term strategy required on: Commercial; Accommodation Requirement and Plans: Disposal, Investment (Enhanced target standard, Net Zero, Minimum Energy Efficiency); Operational Usage.

• Establish prioritisation for investment; balanced against enduring commitment and operational requirements.

Commercial and Finance 

• Budgetary responsibility and lead on spend alongside investment.
• Commercial understanding to ensure contracts are aligned and service provisions are being provided as per the Service Level Agreement.

Across Departmental and Ministerial Point of Contact (POC)  

• To operate as a key POC for across departmental and wider government issues relating to the use of the estate
• Accountable for the effective management, briefings, interfaces and relationships with Ministers, Senior Officials

Person specification

The successful candidate must be able to demonstrate their experience and skills against the following essential criteria:

• Experience in managing complex delivery contracts.
• Excellent leadership skills with an ability to create and present a clear vision and set direction, that motivates and empowers others to work towards a common goal. You will also need to demonstrate when you have been able to build and lead high performing, dispersed teams, in a complex and matrixed environment, adapting your leadership style where appropriate. ​
• Experience in making difficult decisions using evidence-based approaches and knowledge to provide accurate, expert and professional advice to a variety of senior stakeholders. ​
• Track record of using innovation and problem skills to deliver high quality results and working collaboratively with very senior stakeholders and delivery partner.
• Proven experience of senior stakeholder management in a political, pressured environment with evidence of building credible and respected relationships, especially at board level. You must also demonstrate your effective negotiation and influencing skills with a range of internal and external stakeholders.
• Evidence of operating in an environment that attracts significant stakeholder interest, a high customer focus and an ability to successfully collaborate at all levels.

Benefits

• Learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 27%

Things you need to know

Selection process details

To apply for this post, you will need to complete the online application process accessed via the advertisement listed for this role. This should be completed no later than 23:55 Sunday 18th August 2024 and will involve providing the two documents outlined below via the Civil Service Jobs portal:

• A CV (no more than 2 pages) setting out your career history, with key responsibilities and achievements. Please ensure you have provided reasons for any gaps within the last two years.
• A Personal Statement (no more than 2 pages) explaining how your personal skills, qualities and experience provide evidence of your suitability for the role. 

Please state in your application which role(s) you are applying for.

Both documents are weighted equally in their scoring so it's important to consider this when uploading your application. Failure to submit both documents will mean the panel only have limited information

Q&A session

Phil Riley, Director Accommodation will be offering an online Q&A session on Friday 9th August 15:00-15:45 to provide an overview of the role. Candidates can access the meeting by clicking here.

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

Security

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

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

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.