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Function: Chief Operating Office

Grade: ML1/SB1

Salary: £32,750 per annum to £38,950 per annum

Role Type: Hybrid/ Home-based with occasional travel as required.

At Northern, we are dedicated to developing and delivering a better rail service in the North of England, by employing driven and motivated people to improve what we do on a daily basis. We have an exciting opportunity for a Project Support Manager to join us on a 1 year fixed term contract to support in the full life circle of complex Operations Transformation projects within the COO function.

As the Project Support Manager, you’ll be responsible for supporting the Director of Operational Transformation to ensuring complex projects are completed on time and within budget. You’ll be responsible for all project documentation, ensuring it is complete, accurate and up to date. You’ll also assist in the creation of detailed and engaging presentation material, as well as complex business cases. In addition, you’ll be responsible for the diary management of all operational transformation project meetings, tracking and monitoring actions and outcomes, and provision of note-taking support as required.

Working with key stakeholders and project managers, you play a pivotal role in ensuring key project interdependencies are clear, understood, monitored, and managed. Where necessary you will aid in the appropriate management of uncertainty, identification of opportunities or risk, tracking their elimination or developing of appropriate mitigation measures; highlighting and preventing risk to the business.

As a self-starter who can maintain high standards in a fast paced environment, you’ll successfully manage a wide range of simultaneous, interdependent tasks, working to tight deadlines often under pressure. As well as have the ability to prioritise and manage multiple workstreams into one deliverable plan, whilst engaging with a wide range of stakeholders to work towards a common goal.

Role Responsibilities

This role is key to the successful and effective running of not only the COO function, but also the wider business. Your main duties include but not limited to:

• Work with Project Managers and stakeholders to ensure key project interdependencies are understood, monitored, and managed.
• Support with the creation of business cases and presentational materials on proposed initiatives, plans and negotiations.
• Support with the appropriate management of uncertainty, identification of opportunities or risks, tracking their elimination or developing appropriate mitigations.
• Ensure that project documentation is complete, accurate, and up to date.
• Evaluate project schedule progress and performance and identify developing problem areas.
• Support in the provision and maintenance of project documentation as required including Project Status Reports / Workshop Materials / Team resource structure, roles and responsibilities documents / Action Tracker and Risk Log / Project Initiation Document / Scope Document / Indicative Implementation Plan / Updated RAAIDD Log
• eep the Director of Operational Transformation and PMO informed of the progress and status of the project portfolio.
• Scheduling / diary management of Operational Transformation meetings and provision of administrative support as required.

About You

Being a confident person, you’ll easily build working relationships with people of all levels; demonstrating high interpersonal skills and excellent communication skills (both written and verbal) leading to effective and productive stake holder management. You’ll adopt a go-getter type attitude, maintaining high standards in a fast-paced and demanding environment, with the ability to prioritise workloads to fit the changing needs of the business; whilst demonstrating the ability to develop and deliver plans.

You should also be able to demonstrate the following:

Essential:

• Experience in complex project planning processes and identification of inter-project dependencies
• Good knowledge of project management methodologies and planning tools, and document management systems (such as SharePoint)
• Proficient in the use of scheduling software e.g. MS Project
• Proficient in Microsoft Office (particularly Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel)
• Strong organisational and time management skills
• Good written presentation skills, presenting complex information in condensed forms.
• Ability to analyse data and make informed decisions.
• Ability to work independently and in a team environment.
• Strong communication skills to effectively engage, promote and influence across a large range of stakeholders
• Keen attention to detail; outcome focused; and
• Flexible, with the ability to prioritise and re-prioritise in the light of changing circumstances.

Desirable:

• Educated to degree level is desirable, with strong analytical skills.
• Either a Member of the Association for Project Management or equivalent or working towards membership is desirable

You'll also need to share our values, too. They reflect what's important to the way we work, which means we look for the same in everyone who joins us...

Make it easy - Who likes complicated? We keep things simple, help each other out, and always find solutions.

Make it happen - We get the job done. Our expertise and knowledge mean we see things through

Make it last - What we do today affects tomorrow, so we look after the environment, our communities and each other.

Our Benefits Package

Because we value our people and reward hard work, we’ve created a benefits package that we think you’ll love. So, you’ll be able to make the most of:

• Opportunities to progress and grow - including comprehensive training schemes and a range of online learning courses.
• Agile working for non-train crew - many of our roles can now be based at both home and the office, which is great if you are looking for flexibility.
• Free Travel on Northern services - everyone who works at Northern, plus their partners/spouses and dependents, can travel for free right across our full network of services. *Certain eligibility criteria will apply.
• 75% discount with other Train Operating Companies - after 2 years with us, you’ll also get discounted travel on many other rail services in the UK and Europe.
• Defined Benefit Pension Scheme - you’ll rarely find a pension as good as a Northern pension, and we top up your pension with a generous 1.5 times your contribution.
• A generous holiday entitlement - our incredibly generous holiday entitlements can help you feel like you can get away too.
• Exclusive benefits with Northern Perks - enjoy retail discounts, instant vouchers, cashback, wellbeing support and much more.

Plus many, many more.

About Northern

At Northern, we play a vital role connecting millions of people to work, leisure and education opportunities.

We operate 2,500 services a day to more than 500 stations across the North of England. But our vision is about more than just train travel. It’s about setting a new standard for customer experiences. And that means building a different kind of workplace. One that values individuality and celebrates differences. Somewhere we can work together, have fun, and get stuck in to making our customers’ lives easier. A place that goes out of its way to create incredible opportunities for everyone to grow and be the best we can be every single day.

So, if you’re smart, forward thinking, passionate and full of fresh ideas like we are, you could play your part in making it happen.

We’re an equal opportunities employer and a promoter of diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We are committed to encouraging and celebrating applications from different backgrounds, whatever their gender, ethnicity, race, religion, education, socioeconomic background, disability or sexual orientation.

We also have Disability Confident status, which means we’re committed to making the most of the talents that disabled people can bring to the workplace.

Your on-line application

Ready to help our customers go do their thing? You can get started by telling us more about what your thing is.

The first thing you need to do is complete our online application form and tell us a little bit more about yourself.

Once we have all your details, we will be back in touch to let you know what to expect.

Important: Northern reserves the right to close the advert before the published closing date if high volumes of applications are received. In this situation partially completed applications will not be progressed forward or given extra time to complete.