IT Portfolio Manager

This IT Portfolio Manager position will report to the Head of IS Commercial, Strategy & PMO and will work within the Information Systems directorate based in our London office. You will be a permanent employee. You will attract a salary depending on your skills, qualifications and experience and a bonus of 10%. This role can also offer blended working after probationary period (6 months) – 3 days in the office and 2 remote.

Benefits:

• 25 Days Annual Leave plus bank holidays.
• Reservist Leave – Additional 18 days full pay and 22 unpaid.
• Personal Pension Plan – Personal contribution rates of 4% or 5% (UK Power Networks will make a corresponding contribution of 8% or 10%).
• Tenancy Loan Deposit Scheme, Season Ticket Loan.
• Tax efficient benefits: Cycle to Work, Home & Tech, and Green Car Leasing Schemes.
• Occupational Health support.
• Switched On – scheme providing discount on hundreds of retailers' products.
• Discounted gym membership.
• Employee Assistance Programme.

Company Overview:

UK Power Networks (UKPN) is a distribution network operator for electricity covering Southeast England, the East of England and London, serving 8.3 million domestic homes and businesses, and some 20 million customers.

Responsibilities:

• Maintain the safety and reliability of the electricity networks.
• Connect new customers' premises to electricity.
• Extend and upgrade the electricity network to facilitate decarbonisation and customer needs.

Job Purpose:

Information Systems (IS) meaningfully contributes in ensuring UK Power Networks remains the best performing UK network operator. However, the electricity industry is now going through a period of unprecedented change, driven by the need to develop smart networks that react to changes such as the proliferation of local and central generation sources, and the significant demands that will quickly emerge from a move to electric vehicles. The innovative exploitation of technology and data will be at the forefront of ensuring competitive advantage within this changing market and IS needs continually to adapt to support effective technology‑enabled business change across customer, enterprise and smart power systems. IS has made strong progress over recent years in ensuring a high‑quality IT service able to respond to rapidly changing needs, consistently being scored 9/10 for its internal customer service performance by employees. UKPN is now seeking an experienced IS Portfolio Manager to provide strong delivery leadership needed during this next key period of change.

Main Goals For The IS Portfolio Manager Include:

• Oversee c.£40m of annual CAPEX investment to ensure we have effective governance and control of expenditure, benefits achievement and output delivery, as well as good business engagement, aiming to deliver at least 94.5% CSAT for the projects we deliver.
• Responsible for the whole IS portfolio of change encompassing Core IS, Digital, Enterprise Data, OT and Cyber.
• This is a newly expanded role, and the successful candidate will be expected to ensure current disparate ways of working all come under their responsibility in a consistent manner.
• All PMs and BAs will report into this role, together with PM contractors, you will support them to provide important partners with effective and valuable planning, prioritisation and delivery assistance.
• Role is responsible for consistency and efficiency across all delivery teams.
• Ensuring all processes, tools and reporting are appropriate (this will include reviewing existing approaches, implementing new ones and streamlining our project delivery from start to finish).
• Provide tailored support to value streams and projects, depending on level and audience.
• Implement a reporting method to capture the outputs from projects across the portfolio.
• Deliver clear, easy to understand and appropriately detailed communication of progress, for a variety of audiences, including:
• Track progress and inter‑dependencies between different parts of the roadmap and customer delivery projects.
• Use Monday.com to create appropriate and consistent progress reports for different audiences, e.g. the Board, Exec Team, SMT and company‑wide.
• Manage effective internal communication of progress on our roadmap and projects, ensuring there are clear priorities which are understood by our SMT and the wider company.

Develop a culture of trust and respect around the full IS Portfolio:

• Develop good project governance, including:
• Identify important milestones and collaborate with important partners to ensure projects run smoothly.
• Create a risk register.
• Design and track important metrics to assess the effectiveness of planning, prioritisation and delivery.
• Help establish and maintain strategic partnerships with third‑party vendors and contractors.
• Chair performance meetings, ensuring critical issues and delays are discussed and addressed appropriately and effectively.
• This will include:
• Track the development of our roadmap, customer projects etc. to ensure time and resource is allocated.
• Work with the PMO to ensure the correct governance is followed.
• Track interdependencies and interfaces, flagging issues early and de‑risking, where appropriate.
• Follow up on action points, making sure they are concluded.
• Flagging resourcing issues, delays etc. early and effectively, ensuring problems can be meaningfully and efficiently discussed at SMT meetings, resulting in agreement of suitable action(s) to achieve appropriate resolution(s).

Nature and Scope:

Capex Portfolio Delivery – Accountable for the IS Portfolio through development and implementation of multiple large programmes and technology projects. This will involve working closely with delivery leads of all programmes to ensure we have consistent, robust controls and governance in place such that we deliver targeted outcomes within budget and delighting the business with the end product.

Qualifications:

• Experience bringing different teams together to deliver in a consistent manner.
• Experience delivering business and technology projects that resulted in business impact/value.
• Experience of managing a portfolio of Business and IT Projects and Programmes, utilising both traditional waterfall and more contemporary agile methodologies.
• Experience of project management in a technical setting.
• Ability to identify the gaps and independently work to implement solutions.
• Experience of different project management tools to identify appropriate solutions at all levels within the company.
• Experience managing partners with competing priorities.
• Experience building positive working relationships with cross‑functional teams, including the ability to build respect and credibility with technical teams, such as Engineers and Scientists.
• Someone who enjoys being extremely hands‑on and likes to get involved on the ground.
• Ability to lead teams out of a state of uncertainty/change to focussed/impactful outcomes.
• Ability to analyse problems and define and develop solutions.
• Ability to create strong relationships and trust with peers, vendors and customers.
• Results and outcome oriented, with the energy and determination to succeed.
• Ability to work well under pressure.
• Adaptable to changing demands in a fast‑paced environment.
• Promote continuous improvement, learning and development, and foster an environment where people love to come to work.
• Self‑starter – able to formulate and develop the role across all aspects.
• Regulatory business experience preferred.
• Knowledge of SAP.
• Line Management responsibilities – developing people.
• Experience of Monday.com, and all standard project management Microsoft products.

Health & Safety Responsibilities:

Managers and supervisors carry both legal and company responsibilities for ensuring the health and safety of their employees, those under their control and those who might be affected by the work undertaken, i.e. public, visitors and employees of other organisations. This includes briefing individuals working for them and ensuring there is the necessary understanding, competence and application of requirements to work safely and without harming the environment. Employees will ensure they fully understand the health and safety risks involved in their work activities and their responsibility to apply the controls needed to manage those risks to acceptable levels. Similarly where work activities can have an adverse impact upon the environment, and particularly where there are legal requirements, employees will understand those impacts and the controls they must ensure are applied. Employees need to be aware that for some craft and operational roles that work at height, or use fall arrest devices, there is an upper weight limit of 116Kg due to maximum safe working load of the safety equipment that is used.

Equal Opportunity:

We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristics in line with applicable legislation. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace.

Safeguarding:

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people. Where applicable, this role is subject to safer recruitment processes and robust pre‑employment checks. If in doubt ask!