Portfolio Delivery Lead in Chelmsford

Working hours: 37 hours per week (flexible working arrangements will be considered)

Permanent Salary: circa 94,000 per year (depending on experience) plus Car Allowance, Bonus and Other Benefits

Location: hybrid working with office location at Pity Me, County Durham

As a Portfolio Delivery Lead, you are accountable for the successful delivery of a significant capital investment portfolio, typically exceeding 500 million, either in the Water or Wastewater WINEP programme. You will hold end-to-end accountability for ensuring the portfolio delivers its required outcomes safely, efficiently, compliantly, and to expected performance commitments.

You are responsible for leading the delivery of a portfolio of related projects and programmes through Living Water Enterprise (LWE) and Ecosystem, ensuring that strategic objectives are translated into successful delivery on the ground. This includes direct accountability for the performance, delivery outcomes, and effectiveness of Programme Managers, and their Project Managers, operating within your portfolio area, whether defined by catchment, geography, regulatory outcome, or work type.

The Portfolio Delivery Lead owns overall portfolio delivery performance, including scope, schedule, cost, risk, quality, stakeholder satisfaction, and regulatory commitments. You are expected to create the conditions for sustained outperformance by setting clear expectations, establishing robust governance, aligning resources to priorities, and driving a culture of accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

Working across the enterprise, you will develop and lead the strategic delivery plan for your portfolio, ensuring that resources, capabilities, and investment are optimised to achieve the required outcomes while maximising value for customers, communities, and the environment. Ultimately, you are the single point of accountability for the delivery of the capital portfolio within your assigned area of responsibility.

Your work helps us care for the essential needs of our communities and environment, now and for generations to come, and moves us towards being the national leader in sustainable water and wastewater services, living our values: Customer Focused, Results Driven, Ethical, Innovative and One Team.

If you have experience in a senior level strategic role and held end-to-end accountability for successfully delivered programmes - we would love to hear from you!

You can manage high profile stakeholder relationships, ensuring stakeholders are well-informed and are supportive of the programme. You implement opportunities to generate value and can bring in learning from other parties and sectors to improve performance.

You adopt evidence-based decision making to balance risk and reward and appreciate the impact of programme decisions and actions outside the programme and potential future consequences.

As a leader, you inspire people to take responsibility for their performance and to leave a positive legacy. You realise the wider benefits of collaboration, rather than if projects and other work within a programme had been managed as standalone activities.

Here at Northumbrian Water/Essex & Suffolk Water, we embrace and value Diversity, Inclusion and Equity, and encourage all colleagues to bring their most authentic self to work.

Our colleague network groups include our Rainbow Support Network (LGBTQIA+), REACH (Race, Ethnicity, and Cultural Heritage), WiSTEM (Women in STEM) and Thisability (disability and neurodiversity) networks. They provide a safe space for colleagues from diverse backgrounds, welcoming all colleagues regardless of their personal characteristics to participate in valuable conversation that improves our organisational awareness, understanding and inclusivity.

We encourage and welcome all applications, as we strive to be an equal opportunity employer, committed to having diverse communities represented within all our teams, structures, and organisation.

Please note this role will require a DBS to be completed prior to employment. NWG are an inclusive employer who support the rehabilitation of offenders, we will not, however consider candidates who have certain unspent convictions to ensure our commitment to fostering a safe and secure working environment for all OR colleagues, suppliers, customers and third parties.

Here at NWG we strive to make Northumbrian Water Group (NWG) a Great Place to Work, for all. We embrace and value Diversity, Inclusion and Equity and encourage you to bring your full self to work. As an equal opportunity employer we’re committed to having a diverse community represented across our business.

We’re aware that not everyone will have every skill listed in the job description, however if you have some of the skills listed, we'd encourage you to apply.

Our purpose at NWG is caring for the essential needs of our communities and environment, now and for generations to come. We do this by providing reliable and affordable water and wastewater services for our customers. We make a positive difference by operating efficiently and investing prudently, to maintain a sustainable and resilient business. Our vision is to be the national leader in the provision of sustainable water and wastewater services.

To support us in achieving our vision, we have five core values which are the guiding principles, defining who we are, what we do and how we do it:

• Results Driven: We take responsibility for achieving excellent business results.
• Ethical: We are open and honest and meet our commitments with a responsible approach to the environment and our communities.
• Customer Focused: We aim to exceed the expectations of our internal and external customers.
• Innovative: We continuously strive for innovative and better ways to deliver our business.
• One Team: We work together consistently, promoting co-operation, to achieve our corporate objectives.

We’re a Great Place to Work because of the amazing people who work for us, and to say thank you we offer a range of benefits to colleagues. Our ‘Tap Into’ benefits include:

• Generous holiday entitlement starting at 26 days, plus bank holidays and additional time off on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. There’s also the option to buy or sell holidays.
• Company pension scheme, where we’ll double match your contributions up to an employer contribution of 11%.
• Free access to local attractions.
• A fantastic discount scheme, with savings on days out, shopping, travel and more.
• Award winning ‘Living Well’ wellbeing support, including access to a digital GP service for you and your family members.
• Support with sustainable travel – through salary sacrifice cars and a cycle to work scheme.
• Financial wellbeing support – access our community savings scheme, financial education and low cost loans through Salary Finance. We also provide 4 x Life Assurance and an Income Protection Scheme.
• Support with your development – we offer a range of development opportunities, can support you through an interest free qualification loan and we’ll even pay for any relevant professional body subscription.

This role has also been defined as a safety or security critical role and as a condition of a formal offer of employment you’ll be required to undergo a drug and alcohol test. Prospective employees and agency workers in defined safety and security critical roles will be required to undertake a drug and alcohol test after the job offer has been made. This will be prior to or within four weeks of their start date. Prospective employees and agency workers who fail a pre-employment urine drug screen will have their sample analysed by the Company appointed laboratory as a matter of course. Failing a pre-employment drugs or alcohol test may lead to the job offer being revoked.

NWG (Northumbrian Water Group) provides water and sewerage services to 2.7 million people in the North East of England as Northumbrian Water, and water services to 1.5 million people in the South East of England as Essex & Suffolk Water. We are proud to serve our customers and we're committed to delivering great service, putting our customers at the heart of everything we do.