House of Commons
The House of Commons is a unique and exciting place to work right at the heart of the UK's thriving democratic system.
Behind the scenes, the House of Commons Service is made up of more than 3,000 employees who support and facilitate the smooth day to day running of the House. They provide professional services to Members of Parliament, their staff, and the wider parliamentary community.
Staff Benefits
In addition to your salary, we offer an attractive range of benefits including:
- 30 days' annual leave (increasing to 35 days after first full leave year).
- Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 27%.
- Access to training and development.
- Flexible working.
- Interest free season ticket loan and bicycle loan.
Introduction
The Finance, Portfolio and Performance (FPP) Team is critical to supporting a thriving Parliamentary democracy. We play a leading role in delivering the House of Commons' Strategy through business and financial planning, monitoring performance, supporting the delivery of projects and programmes across Parliament, and promoting innovation and improvement. The business area includes a range of teams including the Enterprise Portfolio Management Office (EPMO).
The Enterprise PMO is a bicameral team working across the House of Commons and House of Lords. It sits at the centre of Parliament's projects, working as the 'hub' in the PMO network, and working closely with all areas of the business to shape, oversee and safeguard the delivery of major projects. It supports the Strategic Portfolio Board (SPB) and provides portfolio management, governance, and assurance for an exciting and complex range of projects and programmes with lifecycle costs of over £1bn, including the Portfolios of Strategic Estates (SE) (who maintain the iconic Palace of Westminster), Parliamentary Digital Service (PDS) and the Strategic Portfolio.
The Role
We have exciting opportunities for two Senior Portfolio Managers to join our central team and support the delivery of our most critical projects and programmes.
The Senior Portfolio Manager role will manage the definition and lifecycle of a varied portfolio of projects and programmes, to enable the successful delivery of strategic objectives across the portfolio. They will be responsible for supporting the establishment, prioritisation, and performance of Parliament's portfolio of projects and programmes, with specific responsibility for Risk and Issues management, Benefits management, Reporting and Insight, and Planning. They will also contribute to other portfolio functions including prioritisation, assurance, assumptions, lessons learned and dependency management. Although both roles will work broadly across the portfolio, each will have a core area of focus:
- Risks and Lessons learnt.
- Performance and Reporting
Both roles will suit initiative-taking and highly motivated individuals with experience of monitoring the progress of large portfolios, influencing strategic decisions, and driving successful outcomes. The role will offer challenge, variety, and opportunities for development as well as the ability to bring about real and lasting change, and report and influence at the highest levels of the organisation.
The post holders will task manage other staff within EPMO team depending on prevailing business need and will report to one of the Function leads.
Some of the responsibilities for this role include:
Senior Portfolio Manager (Core focus area: Risks and Lessons learned)
- Act as a business partner to project delivery and portfolio management teams, providing guidance and support on Risks and Issues Management, lessons learned and other portfolio management functions.
- Lead the development and implementation of an Enterprise Risk and Issue monitoring and management process.
- Embed a culture of risk management across the portfolio, liaising with local PMOs and the Corporate Governance team to encourage collaboration and good practice.
- Manage an Enterprise level risk register, providing cross cutting analysis and trends, supporting decision making at the Strategic Portfolio Board (SPB) on risk and issues management.
- Working with the Data & Information Manager, to lead the development of an Enterprise lessons learned framework and a central repository for projects and programmes across Parliament.
- Drive a culture of learning lessons across the portfolio, coordinating cross-cutting themes, including the escalation of strategic remedial actions to SPB and other Senior boards, and supporting local PMOs/PPM colleagues to facilitate lessons learned workshops.
Senior Portfolio Manager (Core focus area: Performance and Reporting)
- Act as a business partner to project delivery and portfolio management teams, providing guidance and support on Planning, Prioritisation, Performance, Reporting and other portfolio management functions.
- Lead the development of a portfolio delivery plan for Parliament's most complex and large programmes and projects, and coordinate portfolio prioritisation reports to the Strategic Portfolio Board.
- Contribute towards the portfolio prioritisation cycles and reports to the Strategic Portfolio Boards on its Balance of Investment, including providing insights to inform the Medium-term financial planning process.
- Lead the delivery of continuously improved portfolio reporting, in collaboration with portfolio management offices and other stakeholders, to refine existing enterprise data repositories, refresh minimum data standards as required and evolve the use and value of portfolio reporting in Parliament.
- Represent Enterprise PMO at project status reporting (PSR) and programme/project meetings, providing advisory support to the Senior Responsible Officers (SROs) and programme/project teams.
- Manage the end-to-end reporting cycle, including running Enterprise PMO's data analysis and intelligence units (DIU), critically examining and challenging information provided, generating insight, and identifying common themes and challenges.
Skills and Experience
To be successful in this role you will demonstrate:
Functional skills and experience - (Core focus area: Risks and Lessons learned)
- Evidence of risk management including identification, assessment, management, tracking and reporting of risks in a complex and dynamic portfolio, programme or project environment.
- Working knowledge and practical experience of capturing and communicating lessons learned management in a complex and dynamic portfolio.
- Strong understanding of portfolio, programme, and project management principles, including an appreciation of different delivery approaches (e.g. Waterfall, Agile).
Functional skills and experience - (Core focus area: Performance and Reporting)
- Experience of undertaking data analysis, providing insight, and strong proficiency with management and digital analytic tools such as Microsoft Excel, Power BI.
- Experience of leading end-to-end portfolio-wide prioritisation and management information processes in complex organisations, including requirements definition, design, development and data repositories.
- Strong understanding of portfolio, programme, and project management principles, including an appreciation of different delivery approaches (e.g. Waterfall, Agile).
Stakeholder management
- Proven experience of strong collaboration skills, working with a wide variety of people to achieve common goals, being able to build trusted and sustainable relationships with individuals in a high-pressure and uncertain environment.
- Ability to work successfully within a team, with the ability to establish positive working relationships and influence people at all levels within the organisation.
Analysing and decision-making
- Experience of bringing together information derived from a variety of sources and integrating them to an accessible high-level portfolio view, demonstrating an ability to think strategically, anticipating impacts on investment priorities and managing high-level risks and uncertainties.
- Highly effective organisational skills with the ability to identify and adapt to changing priorities, deliver high quality work at pace to agreed targets, in line with wider demands within the Finance function and House Service.
Communicating
- Able to explain complex technical information in a concise and meaningful way to senior stakeholders, including the ability to produce high-quality written work.
- Highly developed written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to facilitate senior-level group discussions.
Leading for results
- Proven ability to provide leadership, set strategic objectives, develop, and motivate teams to deliver results across formal reporting lines while promoting a culture of diversity and inclusion and supporting others in the delivery of their roles.
- Seeks out good practice within the profession, with the ability to challenge and improve services and products.
Next Steps and Additional Information
CV & Supporting Statement - If you would like to apply for this role, please submit your CV and covering letter with a 500 word limit.
More information on the role and the full criteria can be found in the Job Description.
Please indicate in your application which role you are interested in:
- Senior Portfolio Manager (Core focus area: Risks and Lessons learned)
- Senior Portfolio Manager (Core focus area: Performance and Reporting)
As part of the interview process, we may ask you to complete a presentation or other assessment, Further details will be provided if your application is successfully shortlisted for an interview.
Please note that most job offers will be made at the minimum of the salary range, other than in exceptional circumstances.
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