About the job

Job summary

House of Commons

The House of Commons a unique and exciting place to work right at the heart of the UK's thriving democratic system. 

Behind the scenes, the House of Commons Service is made up of more than 3,000 employees who support and facilitate the smooth day to day running of the House. They provide professional services to Members of Parliament, their staff, and the wider parliamentary community.

Introduction 

The Parliamentary Maintenance Services Team (PMST) maintains the Parliamentary Estate (Commons & Lords) buildings, engineering systems and furnishings in order to ensure a fully functioning, safe working environment for the many thousands of people for who work in and visit Parliament and ensure the buildings are equipped for the demands of the 21st century.

PMST enable the key functions of Parliament to take place, working directly with other teams to support the important work of both Houses, including Security; Digital; Safety; Catering; Service Delivery and Strategic Estates.

Job description

You will be working within the Projects team of PMST, a department that consists of approximately 130 in-house staff supported by a range of contractors who maintain the estate.

As part of PMST, the Projects function is focussed on:

• Asset Enhancements - Fabric related projects that enhance the estate, often for high profile internal clients who need high quality and dependable construction work.
• Asset Replacement & Renewal - Each part of our buildings and infrastructure is managed through its life cycle and the projects team focus on ensuring that they provide a continuous operational service when they are near the end of serviceable use.
• Engagement - Acting as the first and last point of contact between maintenance and larger capital projects delivered by both our colleagues within the strategic estate and the “Restoration and Renewal” Programme.

As such we occupy a unique position, based in the heart of the Palace of Westminster and the hub of operations, we are involved with every construction project at each stage of its development across the estate. The PMST itself is undergoing a process of modernisation as we have recently re-structured and in light of the Restoration and Renewal Programme now planning what the processes of maintenance should be in the next 10-15 years.

Some of the responsibilities for this role include:

• Develop business cases to obtain project works authorisation, including costed options appraisal and scopes of work in compliance with parliamentary standards.
• Specify directly or with consultants, any modernisation, remedial or replacement works.
• Deliver project works by following parliamentary project governance, supervising resulting works contractors, undertaking periodic quality and safety inspections and providing quality assurance over the works.
• On completion of works, hand back the installation to the client & PMST obtaining all relevant record information for long term storage in the common data environment, provide requisite information to establish a maintenance plan and inform any derogations or augmentation to standard PPM. Produce metrics and reports to summarise progress and outcomes from projects.
• Act as technical stakeholder for PMST on larger capital works projects (e.g. office fit-outs, full refurbishment of listed buildings, utilities infrastructure, Restoration and Renewal of the Palace of Westminster).
• Comply with CDM, house safety rules and champion safe working in all circumstances.

Person specification

Essential Criteria

• Degree educated (or minimum equivalent NVQ Level 6) in Building Surveying or Civil Engineering.
• Demonstrable working knowledge of Health & Safety issues in a maintenance/construction environment including application of Construction Design & Management (CDM) Regulations.

To be successful in this role you will demonstrate:

• Has successfully managed from design to completion multiple programmes of building maintenance projects or a major project split into multiple packages, ideally in a live operating environment.
• Experience in managing ambiguity in a financial environment for project delivery with strong evaluation and decision-making skills.
• Excellent interpersonal skills, able to communicate clearly and build effective working relationships with diverse stakeholders to achieve shared goals.
• Demonstrable experience of leading and driving process and other improvements, collecting and responding to feedback, innovating and delivering measurable results.
• Effective team leader, mentor and line manager, an advocate for diversity and inclusion, able to set effective team and individual objectives and monitor and manage progress against these.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £56,180, House of Commons contributes £15,186 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

CV & Supporting Statement – If you would like to apply for this role, please submit your CV and supporting statement with a 500-word limit.

More information on the role and the full criteria can be found in the Job Description. 

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 counter-terrorist 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.