Venue Technical Senior Production Manager

We're recruiting a Senior Production Manager for NEC Group Conventions, covering the ICC Birmingham and the Vox at Resorts World. This is a new, additional role created as the department grows, not a backfill.

The ICC and the Vox host association, corporate, banqueting, political, VIP, incentive and hybrid events. When a client books a hall, they get a technical package as part of it: AV, sound, lighting, staging. Your team makes that happen, and then makes it better than what was booked.

You'll sit alongside the events side of the business and own technical delivery across both venues. Three direct reports: two Production Managers and a Technical and Production Administrator who runs crew scheduling, in house and freelance.

Day To Day That Means:

• Leading the PM team, allocating workloads across the event calendar and keeping delivery consistent.
• Delivering your own events hands on, at a lower volume than the PMs so you have capacity to support the team.
• Quotations, cost checks, invoicing, forecasting and budget ownership across staff hours, technical kit and production spend.
• Advising clients on what's possible technically, and upselling production values and room theming where it genuinely improves the event.
• Crew scheduling oversight so every event is resourced properly and on budget.
• Owning health and safety within production, including documentation, hazard walks and the Conventions H&S meeting.
• Reviewing hall technical specifications annually and supporting the sales team with what the venues can do.

The role reports into the General Manager, NEC Group Conventions.

Who This Suits:

You've been a Senior Production Manager, Technical Manager or Technical Project Manager in a venue, a production house or an agency. You've come from a technical discipline, whether that's AV, sound, lighting or staging, and you can hold your own in a room with a client who wants to know what's achievable and what it costs. You'll need real line management experience. This is a leadership role first and a delivery role second. You'll be developing and influencing a team over the long term, so we're looking for someone with the energy and the appetite to build something.

Also Useful:

• Working knowledge of the AEV eGuide IOSH General or NEBOSH (desirable).
• Genuine commercial instinct. Challenging costs and finding revenue is a proper part of this job, not an afterthought.

If you're currently on the road, a lot of agency and production house PMs are doing 50 to 80 days a year away from home. If you want that to stop but you don't want to lose the scale of the work, this is the move. Be clear eyed about the trade off. Association and corporate business in a venue is high volume, high standard and technically demanding, but it isn't always the six figure creative build you might be delivering now. What you get back is your evenings, your weekends outside of event cover, and a technical operation that runs across two of the best venues in the country.

The practical bits:

• Permanent, 40 hours, annualised hours contract.
• Weekend and evening work when events require it, balanced back through the annualised arrangement, plus a shared weekend cover rota across the leadership team.
• Group working from home days are Monday and Friday, and the business flexes to that where it can, but this is an operational role and the event schedule comes first.
• Based across the ICC in Birmingham city centre and the Vox at Resorts World.

Why people stay:

The leadership team here is long tenured, which in live events tells you something. NEC Group is one of the largest venue operators in the UK, with continued investment across its sites, so there's real scope to build a career here rather than just take a job.