Student Casual - Operations Coordinator (BISCA/IDAI) – Grade 5 - 107533 in Birmingham

College/Division: Life & Environmental Science

School/Department: Institute for Interdisciplinary Data Science and AI

Full time/Part time: Part time

Duration of the Post: 22/06/2026 – 17/08/2026

Grade: Grade 5

Hourly rate: £16.52 per hour plus holiday entitlement

Number of positions available: 1

Closing Date: 16/06/2026 at 23:55

Please note that this vacancy may be taken down early depending on the number of applications received. We advise you to submit your application promptly.

This role is 20 hours per week, 3 days per week, ideally worked across Monday to Thursday. Must be able to work on-campus for 3 days per week.

The Institute for Data and AI (IDAI) promotes excellence in Data Engineering, Data Science and AI theory and practice, ensuring their co-evolution and competent adoption across disciplines to enable transformative, interdisciplinary, impactful data-intensive research.

The Birmingham Institute for Sustainability and Climate Action (BISCA) takes a distinct approach to leverage Birmingham’s comprehensive, interdisciplinary research expertise; and apply/translate ideas, skills and influence into wider engagement and action on climate change and broader sustainability matters.

As Operations Coordinator, you will be a key member of the institutes’ joint professional service team, located in the Elm House Hub, providing support for the Institute for Data and AI (IDAI), and the Birmingham Institute for Sustainability and Climate Action (BISCA), across a broad range of administrative duties.

You will use your excellent organisational skills and attention to detail to ensure the people you support are well prepared, and that the tasks you carry out are completed to a high quality in a timely manner.

Main Duties:

• Support diary management, event and meeting planning undertaken by the Operations Team, usually 6-12 months ahead.
• Proactive management of institute and operational email inboxes, Microsoft Teams sites and channels with confidence to make decisions on behalf of others where appropriate.
• Dealing with a wide range of more complex enquiries and correspondence independently or exercising judgement to redirect them to senior colleagues or other departments within the University.
• Support the preparation of meeting-related agendas and papers, including attending meetings to provide high-quality committee support, taking minutes and following up as appropriate.
• Arranging UK and overseas travel, including booking flights, hotels, transfers, and organisation and planning of itineraries, ensuring best use of time and taking into account budgetary constraints.
• Supporting the organisation of events including booking a venue, sending invitations, arranging refreshments, liaising with speakers, managing bookings, co-ordination of colleagues, advertising, collating feedback and reporting back.
• Managing some smaller projects on own initiative, carrying out desk research and sourcing data from internal and external sources to contribute to wider projects.
• Monitoring budgets including processing payments and raising concerns where finances are not in line with the budget.
• Procuring goods and services through the University system.
• Updating and writing contents for the department’s communications e.g. intranet pages.
• Overseeing the day-to-day operations of Elm House meeting, office and collaborative spaces, including coordinating room bookings and maintaining building access records and systems.
• Dealing with health and safety and facilities issues.
• Dealing with arrangements for international visitors.
• Monitoring internal procedures/compliance and ensuring these are followed and disseminated as appropriate.
• Championing non-pay efficiencies, University and Institutes’ sustainability aims, using budgets and procurement processes wisely when purchasing on behalf of the University.

Required Knowledge, Skills, Qualifications, Experience:

• Educated to A Level standard, or equivalent level 3 qualification such as a Level 3 NVQ, or level 3 national diploma or relevant experience evidencing the skills and ability to undertake the role.
• Minimum of grade C/4 in Mathematics and English at GCSE or equivalent level 2 qualification.
• Highly proficient IT skills, particularly in handling complex electronic diaries and emails, the wider MS Office suite of programmes including Excel and PowerPoint, and some experience of using an enterprise resource planning package.
• Proven ability to plan ahead and anticipate requirements, proactively planning own (and sometimes others’ workloads) to manage time effectively, progress tasks concurrently and work to deadlines.
• Excellent communication skills, including the ability to write for different audiences, and to required deadlines.
• Excellent interpersonal skills, inspiring confidence and commanding authority with a range of colleagues while providing excellent customer service at all times.
• A high degree of professionalism, tact, and diplomacy, and the ability to exercise discretion regarding the handling and management of sensitive information/issues.
• A high degree of initiative, personal judgement, resourcefulness, flexibility, and a self-motivating approach.
• Ability to work effectively in a large, complex organisation, and to develop a good understanding of how the University and higher education institutions work.
• Ability to understand policy and procedures and how to apply these.
• Understanding the importance of equality and diversity in the workplace.
• Ability to identify and respond to equality and diversity issues in line with relevant policies and procedures.
• PA experience i.e. diary management, events organisation (desirable).

This role will require you to exercise personal initiative within and beyond the department. You may manage a team or budgets.

This role will require you to work independently on daily, weekly and monthly tasks but also on projects with medium-longer-term horizons without daily supervision. You may manage other staff’s workloads.

You will work under the direction of the senior manager you support, but you will have a significant degree of autonomy. You will deal with the more complex queries and be expected to resolve any problems in your area of responsibility.

You will take day-to-day decisions on managing the diary, emails, preparing papers and booking travel.

You will be liaising with a wide range of internal colleagues and stakeholders, likely to be University-wide and with external stakeholders.

Informal enquiries to Jessica Mylchreest, j.mylchreest@bham.ac.uk, or Ruth Bertram, v.r.bertram@bham.ac.uk.