Senior Project Manager (Ref: 6372)

Natural England is the Government’s adviser for the natural environment and the Nature regulator with a wide range of statutory duties and powers. We provide the evidence, expertise and advice to recover Nature and shape better places for people to live. We do this working through and with others.

Strategic Outcomes for Nature

• Recovering Nature – Increased scale and quality of places where nature thrives.
• Building Better Places – Greener homes and infrastructure create healthier, more investable places, recognising we live better where nature thrives around us.
• Improving Health and Wellbeing – Build nature into everyday life so people can support, access and benefit from nature, wherever they live.
• Delivering Security through Nature – Nature helps us adapt to the threats of a changing climate and improves our national security, supporting more resilient food production, healthy soils, clean and plentiful water and clean air.

The Role

This role is a rare opportunity to play a part to bring about systematic change to the planning system and planning casework. We are seeking ambitious individuals with great communication and organisational skills to join our highly performing, supportive and friendly teams across Natural England’s Sustainable Development work.

Job Purpose

You will help shape and deliver legislative planning, policy reforms and infrastructure projects to ensure that they are customer focused, digitally enabled and sustainable in the long term with a shift to nature’s recovery at scale delivered through the planning system. Priority work areas include the Nature Restoration Fund, wider planning policy reforms and implementing Government reviews such as the Lead Environmental Regulator pilot (major projects/infrastructure development).

Key Tasks/Principal Accountabilities

Responsibilities of this role include:

• Prepare, monitor and control the development of the business case and project plan(s) to ensure that the project scope, cost and timeframes are agreed and deliverable; agreeing and deriving the benefits as intended.
• Apply project management expertise through selection and application of the most appropriate project management methodologies, operating to organisational project delivery standards and ensuring that all approvals and assurance is understood and applied in accordance with schemes of delegation to ensure compliance within your project.
• Identify benefits and ensure they are understood, measured, tracked and owned.
• Supervise the process of contract negotiation and approval and contractor management.
• Undertake detailed stakeholder analysis to ensure that the project is understood and supported by all relevant parties. Plan stakeholder engagement to manage expectations through timely communications to all relevant audiences (internal, external, senior stakeholders, delivery staff).
• Identify, record and monitor project issues/risks including mapping mitigating actions and resolution. Where necessary ensure escalation to the appropriate level at the appropriate time to protect the project and organisation from reputational damage.
• Develop and maintain relationships across the project management and change management profession to enable continuous improvement, best practice change management and build capability across the organisation.
• Undertake the appropriate close procedures for the project including record keeping and lessons learnt to ensure that a formal audit trail is maintained, and future initiatives can be improved.

Knowledge, Skills & Experience

• A recognised project delivery qualification (e.g. APM PMQ, PRINCE2, MSP) or 3+ years of experience managing small projects or working in a management team on larger ones. (Essential)
• Strong knowledge and experience of project planning, risk and benefits management, and business case development. (Essential)
• Able to work effectively across teams and build strong, collaborative relationships. (Essential)
• Able to work confidently in busy and complex environments, making sound decisions and managing risks. (Essential)
• Strategic thinker who can link project work to wider organisational goals. (Essential)
• Professional, organised, and proactive: able to lead by example and hold others to account constructively. (Essential)
• Confident user of Microsoft Office, especially Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and project planning tools (e.g. MS Project). (Essential)
• Experience leading and inspiring teams or mentoring others. (Desirable)
• Experience of leading organisational change / reform projects. (Desirable)

How To Apply

We welcome and encourage applications from all communities. Natural England is accredited to the Disability Confident Scheme, which denotes organisations which have a positive attitude towards disabled people. Disabled applicants who meet the minimum requirements for the role at the shortlisting stage are guaranteed an invitation to interview.

If you require a reasonable adjustment at interview, or there is anything else you would like the panel to take into consideration, you should notify us of this at application stage where possible, or well in advance of your interview. We now provide primary interview questions in advance for all formal recruitments.

This vacancy uses competency-based assessment. We will assess you against the competencies below during the selection process:

• Technical Skills and Knowledge
• Personal Effectiveness
• Work Delivery
• Putting People at the Heart of the Environment

When completing the application form you should present relevant examples using the STAR format. Give us an example of how you have demonstrated the competency (which can be work related or from another area of your life) and tell us about the Situation, the specific Task you had to undertake, the specific Actions you took, and the Result (both immediate and in a wider context) of your Action.

Please note that STAR format is not required when answering a Technical Skills & Knowledge competency. Examples should be given in no more than 250 words for each competency.

If you are successful at the shortlisting stage, you will be invited to attend an interview via MS Teams or a suitable alternative, where you will be asked to give examples for all competencies as set out in the Job Description.

Please note: Artificial Intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application. However, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Technical Skills and Knowledge

• Appropriate project management qualifications (APM, Prince2, MSP, PP3, Agile) or a minimum of 3 years direct project management delivery experience (Essential).
• A track record in successful project delivery and simultaneous management of multiple complex projects with multiple stakeholders (Essential).
• Experience of working on business cases, risk management and benefits management (Essential).
• Experience of developing and maintaining a detailed programme of work, including key milestones, assumptions, dependencies and budget (Essential).
• Experience of leading organisational change projects (Desirable).

Personal Effectiveness

• Be ambitious, identify and adopt ways to make improvements in your team and your organisation and inspire others to act (Practitioner).
• Share expertise and knowledge with people and networks so that you can develop together (Practitioner).
• Act with integrity, addressing challenging issues and managing conflict through being open and objective (Practitioner).

Work Delivery

• Manage and deliver your work to meet agreed targets and deadlines (Expert).
• See the big picture so you can set your team’s work within the context of the organisation’s vision, mission and aims, and help them understand how their work relates to and supports this (Practitioner).

Putting People at the Heart of the Environment

• Listen to and understand diverse partners and customers so that you achieve the best outcomes for them and your organisation (Practitioner).