Deputy Director Safety and Emergency Planning

This role can be based in either MOD Main Building London or MOD Abbey Wood Bristol, however you would be expected to spend at least 2 – 3 days in London per week.

The Defence Nuclear Organisation (DNO) delivers nuclear capability to deter threats and protect our nation. We do this as part of the Nuclear Enterprise working in close partnership with the Royal Navy, the Submarine Delivery Agency and AWE.

The Deputy Director for Safety and Emergency Planning is an opportunity to be at the forefront of protecting our people, our assets and facilitating the safe delivery of our capabilities and activities. In this role you will work to enhance and simplify our approach to safety, environmental protection, climate change and sustainability and emergency planning and response.

Are you a strategic leader who can build capability and lead an impactful team to deliver in the health and safety space? We would love to hear from you.

The current responsibilities of the role include:

• Oversight and governance of health and safety, environmental protection and emergency planning and response performance and risk within DNO, supporting Director General Nuclear to improve performance and culture. Where necessary, coordinate the provision of health and safety advice and act to address serious safety risks and issues across DNO.
• Own and maintain the DNO Safety and Environment Management System (SEMS), the overarching framework of documents for compliance with all safety legislation, defence regulation and defence policy.
• Ensure policy related to health and safety, environmental protection and emergency planning in the Defence Nuclear Enterprise is fit-for-purpose and enables legislative compliance. This includes the development and delivery of a horizon scanning function to identify upcoming legislative changes and challenges and to develop solutions to ensure legislative compliance wherever possible.
• Ensure that the overall safety and emergency planning assurance model remains proportionate and effective. Shape and develop a coherent and proportionate second line safety assurance function, and delivery of the emergency response exercise programme. Lead on the strategic dialogue with statutory and defence regulators, in particular Office of Nuclear Regulation, Environment Agency, Defence Maritime Regulator and Defence Nuclear Safety Regulator.
• Develop a portfolio approach to safety change and improvements linking this directly to those Enterprise risk themes and chronic issues identified, and tracking benefits delivered and evidenced through the assurance/regulatory functions.
• Support delivery of the trilateral SSN AUKUS programme primarily providing safety and emergency planning advice to our Australian partners.
• Coordinate the business area’s approach to Climate Change and Sustainability.
• Persuade and influence a highly diverse set of stakeholders across the MOD, His Majesty’s Government, Industry partners and beyond.

The successful candidate must be able to demonstrate their experience and skills against the following essential criteria:

• Extensive experience of working across the Policy, Strategy and/or Safety profession, setting and implementing policy/strategy and delivering change.
• Experience in leading and delivering the development of health and safety management systems, with evidence of driving improvements in a large scale and complex organisation.
• A proven track record of developing and leading emergency planning and response activity within a high hazard environment.
• Excellent interpersonal skills and demonstrable experience of managing and influencing key internal and external senior relationships, in a multilateral context.
• People leadership – developing and sustaining impactful teams that can influence change across multiple organisations.
• Must hold the relevant professional safety qualification – as a minimum applicants must hold a level 3 safety qualification as recognised by IOSH and be willing to work towards a level 6 qualification in the 1st year of role.

• Learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 27%

This role has a minimum assignment duration of 3 years. An assignment duration
is the period of time a Senior Civil Servant is expected to remain in the same post to enable them
to deliver on the agreed key business outcomes. The assignment duration also supports your career through
building your depth of expertise.

As part of accepting this role you will be agreeing to the expected assignment duration set out above.
This will not result in a contractual change to your terms and conditions.
Please note this is an expectation only, it is not something which is written into your terms and
conditions or indeed which the employing organisation or you are bound by. It will depend on your
personal circumstances at a particular time and business needs, for example, would not preclude any
absence like family friendly leave. It is nonetheless an important expectation, which is why we ask you
to confirm you agree to the assignment duration set out above.

Open to UK nationals only.

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.

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Job contact :

• Name : SCS Management Team
• Email : People-CivHR-SCSCandidateSupport@mod.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : People-CivHR-SCSCandidateSupport@mod.gov.uk