Head of Estate Strategy, Management and Planning
- Civil Service
- Full Time
- Cardiff
- 76,117 - 88,261
Job Description
Job summary
The Home Office (HO) works to build a safe, fair and prosperous UK. We achieve this through our work on counter-terrorism, policing, crime, drugs policy, immigration and passports.
The Chief Operating Officer Group works closely with the Home Offices policy and operational commands to enable us together to deliver the departments priorities. The group is comprised of different teams and professional functions, including Commercial, Communications, Finance, People, Portfolio and Project Delivery, Private Office, Property and Security.
Home Office Property Services (HOPS) are responsible for providing expert property services to the department. The estate comprises of a large, varied portfolio, with mixed use assets, including corporate, warehousing, short-term holding, and public facing facilities. Our teams work with a range of stakeholders within the business and across The Government and Public bodies to establish long-term estate strategies and plans, to achieve business and political priorities, in line with the Government Property Strategy of smaller, better, greener.
Job description
HOPS receive over 500 estate service requests a year, holding a budget of C.220m for estate projects, including refurbishments, new space, and life cycle improvements. You will be responsible for leading and overseeing the planning of projects to the point of construction, creating regional portfolio plans, engaging regularly with other government departments (OGDs), service providers and senior business leads to deliver business objectives with a strategic lens.
You will assist other senior managers across the property function and business, to develop and implement strategy and provide direction for the team ensuring resources are managed appropriately.
You will need to hold and continue to develop a sound understanding of both Property and Project functional areas, the Home Office's business operations, strategies and priorities, Ministerial imperatives and wider Government Property Strategy, National Property Controls and any associated legislation.
Responsibilities
Duties include but are not limited to:
- Leading and effectively managing a national estates management, strategy and planning team, ensuring colleagues remain motivated and successful in delivering tasks across the country, supporting them with coaching, escalations and development/ professionalisation opportunities, when required.
- Being directly accountable for the delivery and management of Home Office estates management, property transactions, strategy and planning programmes, including engaging with senior stakeholders, OGDs and suppliers to ensure our strategy, business needs and timescales are being supported, in addition to managing and challenging expectations.
- Working with other business areas to understand and determine their strategies, priorities and link them with the wider estates strategy, including workforce planning, new initiatives, and requirements.
- Ensuring the effective planning of projects through stakeholder consultation, design and consents before handing over to the delivery team.
- Communicating the Home Office Estate Strategy to OGDs including GPA, OGP and senior stakeholders within the business to ensure alignment with The Government Property Strategy, Cabinet Office controls and Home Office wider workplace and business strategies.
- Leading and networking through strategic engagement with OGDs Estate Teams, The GPA and OGP to ensure they are aware of HO business requirements and ambitions, to develop efficient solutions and opportunities to collaborate in the wider public estate.
- Representing HOPS at senior business boards and OGD events, ensuring HOPS requirements are represented, considered, and shared ensuring future portfolio plans and pipelines are resourced appropriately.
- Ensure investment within the estate for both RDEL and CDEL, is in line with qualitative and quantitative data sources, HOPS future estate strategies and The Government Property Strategy.
Additionally you should be willing to be an active member of the Government Property Profession.
Working pattern
Due to the business requirements of this role, it is only available on a full-time basis.
Travel
The role will involve regular travel to Home Office sites nationally as necessary to visit regional sites, suppliers and engage in customer forums and team meetings. Some HO sites can not be readily accessed via public transport therefore holding a full valid UK manual or automatic driving licence would be preferable.
Person specification
Essential criteria
You must be able to demonstrate
- Highly developed leadership skills, including direction setting, motivation and change management for both staff and suppliers. People management including mentoring, motivating and development of high performing teams.
- Experience and knowledge of working in the property sector, ideally within a large portfolio of assets.
- Tenacity and drive, with a proven ability to resolve problems swiftly and proactively. Ability to exercise good judgement to analyse situations and develop new approaches, factoring in awareness of the estates strategy, and a thorough understanding of customer requirements.
- A commitment to the organisations values and behaviours, equal opportunities and diversity, service regulatory frameworks and requirements, responsibilities under Health and Safety, risk management and security, environmental sustainability and protection of information.
- The ability to understand and interpret complex datasets and quickly identify performance issues and explain both concisely and clearly to stakeholders.
- Excellent written and oral communication skills, using these to manage a variety of stakeholders, demonstrating the ability to mitigate between different agendas, resolve conflict and achieve positive outcomes.
Desirable criteria
- Experience and/or professional qualifications as a property surveyor or asset management.
- Developed knowledge and experience of working in a large property portfolio.
