About the job

Job summary

In a world of complex and growing threats our role in the Ministry of Defence is of increasing importance, ensuring that our Front-Line Commands, the men and women on the front line, are given the best military capability to ensure the defence and security of the UK and its citizens. The size, scale and ambition of our programmes are impressive, and our focus on achieving military advantage requires us to constantly push the boundaries of current technology limitations.

Our role in Strategic Programmes is to provide ‘the tip of the spear’ – the most complex weapons for the Royal Navy, British Army and Royal Air Force. In your role as a Scheduling and Benefits Manager within the Portfolio Office you will be providing a layer of assurance to support the delivery of key programmes that are significant in scale and ambitious in their outcomes, but have little opportunity to miss delivery milestones. This requires us, our delivery partners, and industry to think differently, and you will provide a key layer of assurance to support these goals.

This is an exciting post, requiring a proactive individual with excellent organisational and planning skills. The successful candidate will be flexible, adaptable, confident and able to establish strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders at all levels.  

This position is advertised at 37 hours per week

Job description

The Scheduling and Benefits manager post sits within the Strategic Programmes Portfolio Office. This role is part of an expansion as we grow to support the whole of the Strategic Programmes Directorate. The successful candidate will support our programme teams as they build and maintain choice for Defence. Our work spans the breadth of the Defence enterprise, the international and industrial environments and is continually evolving to meet the challenges of a changing world. The team prides itself on bringing people together to achieve remarkable things; seeing the bigger picture, identifying and seizing opportunities, thinking creatively to solve difficult issues and proactively helping Defence to understand and make choices.

This is an exciting, challenging and fulfilling role for someone with a strong eye for detail, good stakeholder management skills and an inquisitive mindset. The Schedule and Benefits Manager will report into the Head of the Strategic Programmes Portfolio Office and will be responsible for general programme health checks as well as deep dives in to schedule and benefits management assurance activities. This role provides an opportunity to be an integral part of the delivery of a key future capability within one of the most important portfolios in Defence, supporting all our armed forces and maintaining UK security and Freedom of Action.

The role itself is of three parts, the overarching element will be conducting programme health checks. This will involve agreeing and reviewing a set of agreed programme artefacts each programme should have, based on agreed programme management principles set by the Infrastructure Project Authority. 

The second element will be scheduling. This will involve assessing programme schedules and milestones. Key outputs will include identifying and supporting the accuracy of programme milestone reporting through assessing schedules and monitoring them as programmes mature. This will be important to understand the reasons and risks to delays. Experience across the rest of the Portfolio will allow the successful candidate to offer programme teams guidance in order to avoid common pitfalls and support programme success. Thirdly, to oversee portfolio and programme benefits. This will involve tracking and reporting on benefits as programme's go through their lifecycles as well as staying aligned with wider Strategic Programmes and Defence.  

The successful individual will have strong stakeholder skills as they will be working closely with multiple programmes team, our delivery agent Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S), the Front Line Commands (FLCs), the broader MOD Head Office community and external bodies such as the Infrastructure Projects Authority (IPA).

Person specification

• Delivery & Leadership - Lead on benefits management activity for the Portfolio and work with the programmes/project teams to support delivery of the business case benefits and outcomes. Champion the use of best practice, and provide expert advice for team members and programme/project community.
• Business Case - Support the programme/project manager in preparing and updating the benefits elements of the Business Case working with specialists as required.
• Benefits Management Strategy – Define and shape the benefits management strategy taking into account the wider organisation methodology and the CAAS Common Approach for benefits management.
• Benefits Realisation Plan – Establish and maintain the portfolio Benefits Realisation Plan including change control.
• Tracking & Reporting – Establish the mechanism for the tracking and reporting of benefits through the project lifecycle and into realisation. Oversee and assure benefits tracking at the programme and project level by DE&S and Industry partners.
• Benefits Mapping – Facilitate workshops, maps benefits and circulates for agreement and approval. Apply experience to provide challenge and ensure assumptions are robust. Work with a range of stakeholders to validate and test dependencies.
• Stakeholder Management – Work with Stakeholders to ensure benefits are identified, understood, owned and maximised. Brief key stakeholders ahead of benefits reviews. At portfolio level, ensure coherence of practice across the Strategic Programmes and assess consistency/tests for double accounting.
• Schedule Management – Lead on Schedule Management for the Portfolio, working with Programme teams to establish and maintain a Portfolio level zero plan allowing identification and monitoring of all major milestones, milestone conflicts and dependencies between programmes.
• Programme Schedule Health Checks - To assess programme team schedules and ensure critical milestones are realistic and being declared. Working with programme teams to ensure these are mature and accurate. 
• Integrated Assurance Approvals Plans (IAAP) - Ensure programme teams have an up to date two-year forward look of their programme via an IAAP document regularly updated. 
• Support the operation, resilience and deliverables of the wider Strategic Programmes and Portfolio teams as required, adopting secondary duties as needed.
• Lead for transversal portfolio benefits (including AI-enhanced PD and assurance of affordability workstrands).

Reporting to the Portfolio Office Head, the post-holder may in time have line management responsibility for 1 individual. Open to candidates with transferable skills to meet the demands of the schedule and benefits manager role. Experience in project, programme management would be beneficial but not mandatory. The individual must have strong communication and organisational skills. they should also seek to develop an understanding of several complex programmes within the portfolio.

This role requires an individual with the following personal attributes:  
Essential:

• Proven written and verbal communication skills, including strong interpersonal and relationship building.
• A track record of building good relationships with stakeholders and collaborating effectively across large, complex organisational landscapes.
• Ability to manage and prioritise a portfolio of work autonomously.
• Highly developed organisational skills, with the ability to work effectively across boundaries.
• A strong eye for detail.

Desirable Criteria:

• Experience of working in Portfolio, Programme or project environments.

Development Opportunities - This is an excellent development opportunity for a skilled individual who is either looking to enter or expand and enhance their project/programme management skills to include experience of working within a complex portfolio, operating strategically in a multi customer-facing environment. The Strategic Programmes Directorate encourages knowledge development and supports wider learning. This role provides the opportunity to develop skills and qualifications across a range of disciplines (Benefits, scheduling, P3M and Performance and Change Management) in a unique Head Office directorate.

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 and Experience.

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

This post is classed as ‘Non-Reserved’ as per the Civil Service Nationality Rules. For further information please see the attached documents Thank you.

Candidates can apply online via the Civil Service Jobs website by completing the application form before the deadline shown. Apply using the Civil Service Jobs apply button, filling in all required details in all sections. Using the Success Profiles link for information on format and style, ensure you provide evidence for all requested Behaviours.

Candidates will be required to complete an online CV template to include job history together with a personal statement. Please also include any relevant responsibilities and achievements.

The sift assessment will be based on the CV, required behaviours and the Personal Statement which should be a maximum of 500 words that sets out your motivation for applying and shows how your skills and experience meet the essential / desirable requirements for the role.

If there is a high volume of applications received the initial sift will be carried out on just the Making Effective Decisions behaviour as well as the CV and Personal Statement.

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

• Making effective decisions
• Leadership
• Communicating and influencing

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

• Making effective decisions
• Leadership
• Communicating and influencing

Candidates who are found to meet an acceptable standard at interview but are not successful in one of the advertised posts may be considered for similar roles within the Business Unit..

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 

MOD Recruitment Satisfaction Survey – we may contact you regarding your experience to help us improve our customer satisfaction. The survey is voluntary and anonymous. You may however be given the opportunity to provide additional information to help us improve our service which includes the collection of some personal data as defined by the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). The MOD Privacy Notice sets out how we will use your personal data and your rights.  

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

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.