Operational Resilience & Security Manager in Snodland

The Operational Resilience and Security Manager is responsible for ensuring South East Water comply with the Security and Emergency Measures Direction, as per the Water Industry Act. The role will be responsible for developing our protective security strategy, ensuring the requirements are clearly communicated within South East Water, fully understood and complied with at all times. As a Subject Matter Expert (SME), this role will be responsible for disseminating industry guidance to the wider business, ensuring any risks or issues are identified and appropriate mitigation put in place. The Operational Resilience and Security Manager will lead on our price review submission for security matters, ensuring an appropriate business case is submitted to secure funding for future requirements. In addition, this role will develop and lead our emergency planning capability by engaging with external stakeholders (LRFs, industry working groups, other utilities) and through the newly established Emergency Planning Team, ensuring South East Water has the appropriate emergency plans in place to deal with all foreseeable incidents/events.

Main responsibilities:

• Develop and manage the Operational Resilience and Security team: Lead, mentor and manage the ORS team. Ensure the appropriate processes and procedures are in place, ensuring compliance with requirements set out in SEMD. Provide guidance and expert advice to the team.
• Provide guidance to stakeholders at South East Water, as the business SME: Ensure the wider business has the appropriate level of understanding to maintain compliance. Identify emerging risks and issues early and provide guidance to Senior Management and Directors. Feed into the price review process as the security lead, ensuring funding requirements are clearly articulated taking into account future needs.
• Work closely with our Alternative Water and Ops Improvement Teams, ensuring operational contingency plans align with our business emergency response plans.
• Proactively manage external stakeholders by building trust and working relationships: Lead our engagement with LRFs by participating in working groups and test exercises. Attend external incident debriefs when required. Act as primary contact for the Drinking Water Inspectorate for matters relating to SEMD. Participate in industry working groups, focusing on security and emergency planning topics. Liaise regularly with Water UK to discuss and review industry specific risks. Act as the primary contact for DEFRA.
• Provide guidance through training materials working with the HR Team: Incident management training, security awareness training, emergency planning training.
• Complete our annual SEMD RAG assessment and 'go green plan': Work closely with other departments to ensure our annual SEMD RAG assessment is submitted on time and suitably detailed to the required standard. Identify any areas that are not meeting the standard, identify the appropriate action required and implement.
• Own South East Water's Incident and Emergency Plan: The emergency plan is reviewed annually as a minimum. Responsibility for ensuring the plan is updated, following any recommendations from incident reviews. Ensuring we have a planned programme of test incident scenarios.
• Undertake incident reviews, identify areas for improvement and implement actions: Undertake internal post incident reviews for all level 3 and 4 events. Produce reports for all level 3 and 4 incident reviews and provide recommendations where appropriate. Track incident recommendations and where relevant implementation.
• Own our contracts with external security providers: Ensure we have the appropriate contracts in place to maintain our physical security infrastructure. Ensure our security contractors are providing the right level of service and it represents good value for South East Water.
• Ensure capital projects are compliant with the latest security guidance and SEMD: Advise security requirements for all Engineering schemes. Make sure an appropriate audit process is in place for all construction sites.
• Ensure our Security Risk Assessments are reflective of current risk level and maintained: Responsible for undertaking planned site security audits and undertaking reactive site security audits (following suspicious activity or confirmed intrusions). Complete 3 day and 20 day reports for the DWI following confirmed site intrusions.

You’ll need:

• NVQ Level 3 / 4 (or equivalent) within a security or emergency planning discipline, preferably water industry specific.
• Ability to develop, motivate and lead a multi-disciplinary team.
• Highly organised, methodical, and adept at managing time effectively.
• Demonstrates thoroughness and a strong attention to detail.
• Problem-solving skills, capable of rapid and sound decision-making in high-pressure scenarios, often with incomplete or ambiguous information, utilising strong logical reasoning.
• Ability to influence stakeholders, using sound logic and reasoning.
• Proven track record in managing teams, projects, or large-scale programmes.
• Demonstrable experience creating new teams, projects or workstreams.
• Experience navigating regulated industries and interfacing with bodies such as the DWI.
• Significant experience working within a security or emergency planning discipline.
• Extensive knowledge of SEMD, Emergency Planning Guidance for the Water Industry, Protective Security Guidance for the Water Industry and the Civils Contingencies Act 2004.

Employees are required to be flexible and to be prepared to perform duties and other tasks within their capabilities. The nature of our business is such that the contents of any job profile are subject to change from time to time.

Grow a career with a meaningful purpose. We know the communities we serve are diverse. We recognise creativity comes from diversity not similarity. That’s why we are enthusiastic about creating inclusion across age, race, gender, ethnicity, religion and identity. You will experience our dedication to equal opportunities and fair treatment for all through your recruitment, employment and career progression with South East Water.

Benefits package:

• Excellent Stakeholder pension scheme, up to 10% employer contribution.
• 5 weeks holiday plus bank holidays per annum, increasing to 6 weeks with length of service.
• Flexible annual leave policy to buy or sell holiday leave.
• Paid volunteering days.
• Cycle to work scheme.
• Health cash plan.
• Life assurance.
• Wellbeing related benefits.

What can you expect from your recruitment?

To apply for this position, please submit your CV on our careers website. It is necessary for you to have the legal right to work in the UK when you begin employment with South East Water. Additionally, as part of the employment offer, you will need to pass background, identity, and employment referencing checks.

If this sounds like the opportunity you’ve been looking for, apply now!

South East Water kindly asks that recruitment agencies refrain from submitting CVs to our employees or associates without explicit invitation from our HR Resourcing team. CVs sent on a speculative basis will not be acknowledged and will not assume any responsibility for fees or commissions in the event that we hire a candidate who applied directly or subsequently introduced by an instructed agency.

Compensation package: Up to £70,000, plus a £6,492.29 car allowance.