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Position Details

Academic Services

Location: University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham UK

Full time starting salary is normally in the range £44,414 to £52,841 with potential progression once in post to £59,450

Grade 8

Full Time, Fixed Term contract up to September 2025

Closing date: 28th June 2023

Our offer to you

People are at the heart of what we are and do.

The University of Birmingham is proud to have been a part of the City of Birmingham and the wider region for over 100 years, and we are equally proud to be recognised as a leading global university. We want to attract talented people from across the city and beyond, support them to succeed, and celebrate their success.

We are committed to helping the people who work here to develop through our sector-leading Birmingham Professional programme which provides all professional services staff with development opportunities and the encouragement to reach their full potential. With almost 5,000 professional services jobs in a wide-range of functions in Edgbaston and in our campus in Dubai, there are plenty of opportunities for you to be able to develop your career at the University.

We believe there is no such thing as a typical member of staff and that diversity is a source of strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation, and debate. We warmly welcome people from all backgrounds and are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where diversity is at the heart of who and what we are, and how we work.

Supporting our people to achieve a healthy work/life balance is important both to our employees and to the success of the University and, depending on the role, we offer a variety of flexible working arrangements. We therefore welcome discussions on all forms of flexible working. In addition, you will receive a generous package of benefits including 40 days paid holiday a year, one paid day a year for volunteering, occupational sick pay, and a pension scheme. We also have three high quality subsidised day nurseries.

The University is situated in leafy Edgbaston and there are excellent transport links to our beautiful campus, including main bus routes and a train station on site. On campus we have a state-of-the-art sports centre with pool, shops, places to eat and drink, our own art gallery, museum and botanical gardens.

Find out more about the benefits of working for the University of Birmingham

Background

The University of Birmingham is a global institution working within a diverse and vibrant City, offering an inspiring education to our students, and undertaking critically important research. We are a place of open, critical thinking, and the creation, sharing and dissemination of knowledge. Professional Services put students at the heart of all they do and enable an exceptional educational experience. They provide outstanding support to our researchers and help the University to grow its influence regionally, nationally, and globally. They ensure the University’s resources are used wisely, manage and improve the infrastructure which sits at the heart of the institution, and support decisions to be made quickly and based on sound evidence. Our Birmingham Professional programme operates across the University, supporting colleagues to network and collaborate, offering opportunities to learn and develop, contributing to the delivery of the University’s objectives, and helping everyone to understand the broader context within which we work.

Department overview

StARS (Student Administration Refresh and Simplification) is a University-wide programme to simplify, standardise and improve our student administration services, enabled by a replacement and upgrade of our student record system. Its vision is to deliver a better experience for students, academics and Professional Services staff; and enables a fundamental shift towards a more flexible set of capabilities and services that are fit for the future.

Role Summary

Reporting to the PMO Manager the StARS programme is looking to recruit a PMO Programme Planner / Support Officer to join the Programme’s PMO Team.

The postholder will split their time between providing the programme and its individual projects with support in all aspects associated with maintaining / owning the Programme plan and general PMO responsibilities.

Main duties

• Define, develop and implement project planning standards and outline approach, ensuring programme and project planning capability maturity is developed across the breadth of the programme.
• Facilitate the design and development of high level schematic roadmaps and detailed programme and project plans in collaboration with the programme or project managers/workstream leads, ensuring that all milestones and internal and external dependencies are identified, logged and monitored.
• Ensure that plans are maintained and updated using forecasting to advise on potential missed milestones and dependencies, creating impact assessments to ensure that plans anticipate future developments where possible.
• In collaboration with programme/project managers and workstream leads, ensure the range of plans (e.g. delivery, transitional, benefit and resource plans) are developed to ensure the effective delivery of the programme.
• Analyse interfaces and dependencies between projects and recommend appropriate action where anomalies exist or there are areas of concern.
• Review programme and project/workstream plans against Business as Usual plans to ensure that change can be adopted effectively.
• Establish and operate mechanisms to track programme or project/workstream delivery against the plan and ensure progress updates are reported against the plan.
• Ensure project Managers/Leads adherence to the programmes Governance, standards, processes, templates as well as ensuring the necessary monitoring and reviews are established.
• Supporting Programme/Project Reporting processes and Programme Boards
• Actively manages equality, diversity and inclusion through monitoring and evaluation and actively challenging unacceptable behaviour.
• Supports the University’s sustainability agenda through resource efficient working.

Required Knowledge, Skills, Qualifications, Experience

• Advanced level of knowledge and experience of Microsoft Project
• Prince2 qualifications
• Proven ability in the management of projects from inception to successful implementation, including the development of project plans, and the management of budgets, resources and timelines.
• Ability to broker relationships with stakeholders at all levels, demonstrating the sensitivities required to balance and resolve the tensions in working with a wide range of contacts (both internally and externally at senior level).
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to communicate at all levels, with both technical and non-technical audiences, and to simplify complex issues and concepts, both through presentations and through clear written documents.
• Proven experience in shaping developments through active participation and leadership of project teams.
• Strong analytical skills with proven experience of solving complex problems.
• Ability to monitor and evaluate the extent to which equality and diversity legislation, policies and procedures are applied.
• Ability to identify whether decisions will have an adverse impact on a particular group and to take appropriate action.
• Educated to Degree level (or equivalent qualifications) plus significant relevant practical experience – where no equivalent qualification is held substantial practical relevant experience and expertise in a series of progressively more demanding roles will be required.
• Evidence of literacy and numeracy, with the ability to write clearly for a variety of audiences, and to produce and analyse source material, information and data.
• Authoritative knowledge of the work practices, processes and procedures relevant to the role, including broader sector/commercial awareness.
• Experience of championing Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in own work area.
• Ability to monitor and evaluate the extent to which equality and diversity legislation, policies, procedures are applied.
• Ability to identify issues with the potential to impact on protected groups and take appropriate action.
  

Informal enquires to Mary Li, email: [email protected]

View our staff values and behaviours here

Valuing excellence, sustaining investment

We value diversity and inclusion at the University of Birmingham and welcome applications from all sections of the community and are open to discussions around all forms of flexible working .