Aberdeen, Birmingham, Cardiff, Darlington, Edinburgh, London, Salford. The CCUS team is based across these locations, and many of the key meetings take place in London and the role will require being in London for many of these meetings.

About the Role

The Carbon Capture Usage and Storage Programme (CCUS) is a core DESNZ delivery programme, parts of which are in the Government Major Projects Portfolio (GMPP) and considered to be one of the top five most complex for HMG. It is a fundamental enabler of the cost-effective delivery of net zero carbon emissions by 2050 along with wider economic benefits in terms of creating jobs and securing global market share for UK supply chains. The programme is effectively launching a whole new industry, potentially the size of the UK gas industry, in a period of 10 15 years.

What will the successful candidate be doing?

Operating as a part of the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) of the DESNZ Energy Infrastructure Group (EIG) Group, and reporting to the Director General of EIG, the CCUS Programme Director is central to the success of the Programme. The Programme is a large and complex portfolio, with workstreams over a long time-span which are at different stages of progress. Consequently, the Programme has three SROs (across two Directorates), with clear accountabilities between them for the benefits areas each are responsible for. The Programme Director will work closely with all three SROs to drive an integrated programme forward. The Programme Director provide overall delivery leadership and direction to the CCUS Programme team across key activities, which include:

• Stewardship of multiple delivery partners and supply chains in the sector.
• Delivery by industry of the first tranches of the programme to achieve specific carbon and economic targets.
• Setting up the transition to a self-sustaining market that achieves the net zero targets by 2050.
• Development and leadership of a diverse and inclusive multi-disciplinary DESNZ programme delivery team.

The Programme Director role will:

• Provide senior leadership of a major infrastructure and regulatory programme, where the first tranche alone is on the Government Major Programme Portfolio, that is effectively launching a new industry and is a key enabler of net zero delivery.
• Have management responsibility for eight direct reports at Deputy Director level and a civil servant team of c.240 FTEs.
• Have ownership of programme and admin budgets of c.£20mn pa.
• Collaborate with the SROs to sustain delivery of the programmes business cases, holding to the benefits within them while minimising the costs.
• Work with and provide coordinating leadership to other DESNZ colleagues dependent on CCUS and with other Government departments to ensure that the programme is successful and achieves broader Government policy goals.

As the CCUS Programme Director, your key responsibilities will include:

• Ensuring the CCUS programme solution is designed to deliver the benefits within cost and time constraints.
• Developing the business case and plans to deliver CCUS.
• Ensuring the project is appropriately resourced and organised.
• Ensuring the budget requirements are defined and managed within agreed limits.
• Defining the approach, accountabilities, work scope, and targets for the team.
• Monitoring, forecasting, and reporting overall progress against plan.
• Identifying and resolving risks and issues and controlling change.
• Monitoring and managing supplier performance.
• Collaborating with the SROs on ministerial and cross-Government engagement.
• Engaging and communicating with stakeholders, particularly delivery partners and supply chains.
• Ensuring the project teams activities are ethical and lawful.
• Line management of direct reports and supporting them in team line management.

The successful candidate will be a highly capable Programme Director with extensive commercial and major programme delivery skills and, ideally, an in-depth knowledge of the energy and net zero sectors:

They will be able to demonstrate the following essential criteria:

• Outstanding leadership and management skills in an area of public interest or scrutiny.
• Extensive success at leading major complex infrastructure and regulatory programmes.
• Excellent communication and influencing skills, and the ability to command the respect and trust of external/ industry stakeholders and high profile internal senior stakeholders, such as Ofgem.
• An excellent ability to lead teams that negotiate and influence the most senior industry leaders with credibility, ideally supported by an in-depth knowledge of the energy sector and regulatory arrangements.
• Excellent commercial awareness and an understanding of suppliers and industry commercial matters, and a demonstrable understanding and awareness of value for money and the experience of embedding this into decision-making and programme delivery.

Desirable criteria:

• An ability to demonstrate in-depth and complex strategic thinking that aligns with the overall Government policy direction associated with net zero delivery.

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Leadership
• Communicating and Influencing
• Seeing the Big Picture
• Making Effective Decisions

Alongside your salary of £125,000, Department for Energy Security & Net Zero contributes £33,750 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero offers a competitive mix of benefits including:

• A culture of flexible working, such as job sharing, homeworking and compressed hours.
• Automatic enrolment into the Civil Service Pension Scheme, with an average employer contribution of 27%.
• A minimum of 25 days of paid annual leave, increasing by 1 day per year up to a maximum of 30.
• An extensive range of learning & professional development opportunities, which all staff are actively encouraged to pursue.
• Access to a range of retail, travel and lifestyle employee discounts.
• A hybrid office/home based working model where staff will spend a norm of 40-60% of their time in the office (minimum of 40%) over a month with flex dependent on balancing business and individual need.

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.

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

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 RECRUITMENT TEAM
• Email : [email protected]

Recruitment team

• Email : [email protected]