Director of Asset Management and Operational Resilience

We’re Ofwat, the Water Services Regulation Authority, responsible for regulating water and wastewater services in England and Wales. Our role is to help the sector build trust and confidence with customers, the environment and wider society: keeping water flowing, bills affordable and helping ensure the health of our rivers and waterways. We push hard to improve day-to-day water company performance for customers, including on leakage, sewer flooding and customer service.

We drive the sector to take a longer-term view and to take steps now to protect and enhance the environment, using digital and data innovations and making sure our water supplies are secure for future generations. Through our five yearly price reviews we oversee billions of pounds of investment into the water sector across England and Wales.

You can find out more about Ofwat, our Values and our Framework for Success in the attached Information for Candidates Pack. 

The Sector Performance Directorate

The Sector Performance Directorate supports Ofwat’s objective to be an assertive voice in strategic and investment decision-making for the sector, working with other regulators and governments by shaping the future direction and transformation of sector through alignment with government and other stakeholders, and leading innovation.  The Directorate drives up sector and company performance by regularly, visibly, and proactively challenging companies on their performance, using data and operational expertise.  We monitor and challenge companies on financial resilience, performance commitments, asset management maturity and operational resilience and board leadership and governance practices.   We promote better delivery through championing open data and transparency principles across the sector, including Ofwat’s own practices. 

We are looking for Director of Asset Management and Operational Resilience. This is a key role within the Directorate which will lead on driving greater maturity in asset management and operational resilience across the water sector, to achieve the best outcomes for customers, society, and the environment.  The successful candidate will develop Ofwat’s approach to regulating operational resilience and challenge companies to improve.  The role will involve leading a small team and will be supported by a matrix of engineering expertise along with data and analytical expertise across Ofwat.

Key deliverables

Reporting to the Senior Director of Sector Performance you will be accountable for:

• Leading the development of the integrated monitoring framework for operational resilience to include the development of a comprehensive suite of leading and lagging asset health performance measures, measures of systems resilience, service performance outcomes and organisational capability measures.
• Working with the water sector to improve shared understanding of asset management maturity, driving quality and transparency of decision making, underpinned by open data principles.
• Promoting cross regulator intelligence sharing to combine efforts on customer, environmental and social outcomes requirements underpinning water and waste-water systems resilience.
• Driving value for money for consumers through supporting the scrutiny of PR24 maintenance and enhancement planned expenditure and in year assessment of outcome delivery incentive payments.
• Shaping Ofwat future policy on how to drive better asset management and operational resilience decisions and assessment through the regulatory framework.
• Encouraging the sector to innovate, collaborate and promoting good practice in asset management (including use of digitisation and leading technology enablers) and highlighting challenges.
• Providing operational and asset management thought leadership and tailored support across Ofwat’s work including enforcement, PR24 and RAPID/Major Projects.
• Maintaining and evolving an inclusive culture within the organisation where our people are representative of the communities we serve, and everyone is valued, treated fairly, and empowered to thrive. You will also support our people to sustain a work life balance and get the best from hybrid working.
• Professional leadership and development of Ofwat Water Engineering Science and Technology profession.

To be successful in this role you will need the below essential attributes, experience, skills and knowledge.

Essential Experience, Skills and Knowledge 

• Lead Criterion: Expert knowledge and experience in leading teams delivering asset management solutions, operation, and maintenance of assets, driving value and improved outcomes for the business.
• Experience in delivering Asset Management best practice and leading organisations through advanced asset management capability development including integration of asset data and digital technologies.
• Experience working in a regulated environment.
• Excellent project management skills, experience of leading significant programmes of work fostering a collaborative and inclusive environment and providing constructive challenge to drive change.
• Ability to work with senior leaders, executive teams, and boards across multiple disciplines, communicating with credibility and clarity.
• Skilled at communicating complex engineering operations concepts clearly and to multi-disciplinary stakeholders.
• An inclusive leadership style which inspires, motivates, and promotes collaboration to develop high performing teams.
• Chartered Engineer, diploma / certification in Asset Management

Attributes

Attributes as per Ofwat’s Framework for Success for Director Role. You can read more about attributes here.

• You champion and lead change.
• You build the team.
• You are an adaptable thinker.
• You deliver outcomes.

• A generous Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of  30.3% for this role ( you can expect from £25,800 to £30,300)
• 27.5 days leave (25 days annual leave + 2.5 days privilege leave) increasing to max 32.5 days with each year of service), plus bank holidays 
• access to exclusive discounts on a range of goods and services such as retail outlets, theatre tickets, holidays, insurance and gym membership;
• flexible working arrangements;
• fees paid for membership of relevant professional bodies;
• up to 3 volunteering days per year
• generous shared parental leave and pay
• recognition voucher scheme;
• cycle-to-work scheme;
• season ticket loan for travel between home and office;
• regular professional development;
• health and well-being initiatives

Job contact :

• Name : recruitment@ofwat.gov.uk
• Email : recruitment@ofwat.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : recruitment@ofwat.gov.uk