About the job

Job summary

Head Office provides the Department of State function and political and military strategic direction for the MOD. It is accommodated in Main Building, MOD’s flagship headquarters.

This is an exciting new role within the Director Head Office business area specifically within the Safety Security and Business Resilience (SSBR) business unit.  Its main role is to oversee the safety, security, and resilience of MOD Main Building, ensuring that staff within MOD Main Building can continue to deliver critical Defence outputs in all foreseeable circumstances.  

As part of your role, you will be responsible for the oversight and strategic development and implementation of MOD resilience policy for Head Office Top Level Budget.  You will work closely with the newly created Policy, Governance and Assurance Grade 7 to improve policy, governance and assurance of resilience through the creation and implementation of the Resilience Improvement Plan.  You will be the operational lead for business continuity / operational resilience issues impacting Main Building, working alongside key stakeholders in Security, Defence Infrastructure Organisation and the Private Finance Contractor to ensure that these issues have limited impact on Head Office’s ability to support Defence critical outputs.   You will be responsible for overseeing the production of the resilience risk register escalating issues to the Principal Security Advisor, Deputy Head/Head of Establishment as required.  You will be expected to brief Seniors on resilience plans impacting the building in the event of a threat to life scenario.

Due to the nature of the role, you will be required to support the Head Of Establishment, Principal Security Advisor, and Security team to manage resilience incidents.   This will include managing crises that disrupt or have the potential to disrupt business in MB.  You will have a wider awareness of the changing priorities and responsibilities and be able to work flexibly distinguishing the preferable from the critical.  As this is a new post, you will have an opportunity to shape the future size, shape and responsibilities of the team.  

You may be required to take part in an on-call rota, sharing the responsibility of providing out of hours advice to Main Building users and stakeholders with colleagues across the Safety, Security and Business Resilience team for which an allowance is payable.

This position is advertised at 37 hours per week.

Job description

Specific responsibilities include:

• Develop and implement Business Resilience Strategy and Resilience Improvement Plan for Head Office.
• Oversee all Resilience and Business Continuity issues on behalf of the Head of Establishment/Principal Security Advisor.
• Liaise with wider team including Policy, Governance and Assurance lead to ensure appropriate policies, governance and assurance structure reflect Head Office organisation including development of an effective business continuity exercise programme.
• Overseeing the analysis of mitigation plans for Head Office resilience risks, building knowledge of common themes and identifying gaps.
• Liaise with Directorate of Security and Resilience to ensure Head Office Resilience policies reflects appropriate Departmental policy changes.
• Liaise with key stakeholders to ensure successful resolution of resilience issues. 
• Line management of x1 SEO /C1 and Countersigning Officer for HEO/C2.
• Working closely with the Head Office Security and Safety Team to reduce seams betweenn safety, physical, personal, technical and cyber security.
• Maintaining professional competence.
• This post will require access to STRAP.

The above is an outline of the responsibilities and activities within the role. It is not exhaustive and may vary over time with changes in organisational priorities.

Person specification

• Self-starters who are comfortable working independently in a fast-paced environment, able to set goals, create opportunities, win support for them, and see them through
• People with excellent interpersonal skills, able to express themselves clearly and engage with a diverse set of senior stakeholders to ensure that Head Offices priorities are met.
• People with sound judgement and analytical skills, able to take evidence-based decisions and calculated risks, with a good instinct for when to seek direction.
• People who have can drive forward change and can overcome obstacles to drive forward improvements.
• People who are resilient, able to oversee and progress a broad programme of activities, prioritising among them and delivering to deadlines.
• Individuals who are highly organised and able to establish a close working relationship with a wide range of contacts, inside and outside of the Department
• A sense of fun and a willingness to help develop a close and supportive team ethos.

 Essential

• Experience in Business Resilience / continuity policy and operational delivery within a similar organisation.
• Communication and Stakeholder management skills

Desirable

• Formal/ accredited qualifications in Business Continuity Management 
• Member of the professional body such as the Business Continuity Institute.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £57,670, Ministry of Defence contributes £15,570 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 and Experience.

At Sift: Candidates should submit a CV and personal statement of no more than 1,000 words outlining how they meet the “Essential Criteria” / person spec in the job specification.  You should also provide evidence for the two behaviours below:

• Seeing the Bigger Picture
• Delivering at Pace

At Interview: We'll assess you against these behaviours at interview. Please use examples relevant to the job description, essential and desirable criteria where possible.  

• Communicating and Influencing
• Change and Improving
• Making Effective Decisions
• Leadership

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 developed vetting (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.