PMO Assurance Lead PO4

Do you like project management? Getting caught in the rain? Not into yoga and have an analytical brain? Escape to north-east London and join our Portfolio Management Office as the PMO Assurance Lead.

What is the Portfolio Management Office?

Don’t worry, most people don’t know. We try not to take it personally. At Waltham Forest Council, the PMO is the strategic function behind the delivery team who manage transformational change for the council and residents (what a mouthful). We are responsible for three main functions: resourcing, reporting and assurance.

Resourcing: Ensuring that the right resources are available at the right time in order to deliver the key council priorities.

Reporting: Ensuring that everyone is kept up to date as how these priorities are being address, managing risks by exception and celebrating the successes.

Assurance: Working with stakeholders and project managers to ensure that risks/issues are being resolved at the earliest opportunity and learning from our (occasional) mistakes.

About the role

This role exciting opportunity for a bright, creative and ambitious person to join the newly created Portfolio Management Office in the London Borough of Waltham Forest.

PMO Assurance Lead will be primarily responsible for the second two functions of the PMO – reporting and assurance. Skills around data analysis, problem solving and crisis management are key as you will be the first point of contact when a project isn’t delivering and will be responsible for getting it back on track.

On top of this, you will provide specialist, hands on support and advice for Programme and Project Managers and play a proactive role in:

• Providing knowledge around implementation of best practice related to programme and project management as well as PMO-related governance.
• Making sure that project managers are completing high quality resource, financial planning and management responsibilities.
• Completing analysis, reporting and MI to help drive delivery and make sure an integrated understanding of the portfolios position
• Completing risk, issue and dependency management activities across the portfolio of projects

What we are looking for:

• Positive and proactive approach to delivery
• Sound understanding of project management processes, standards and governance 
• Previous experience working in / within teams who employ both incremental and iterative methodologies
• Strong results focused leadership and communication skills with the ability to work collaboratively and influence others
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving ability including Microsoft Excel to an advance level
• Significant delivery methodology knowledge, preferably PRINCE2, Agile, Waterfall and MSP
• Outstanding stakeholder management, providing service to internal stakeholders to achieve successful project outcomes

Rest of the team

Don’t worry, you won’t be the only one in the PMO. There are several other roles that you will be working with on a day to day basis

• Head of PMO: You will be working directly for the Head of the PMO, who is a senior manager as part of the wider Change Agency (that delivery team who manage transformational change for the council and residents we mentioned earlier).

She is responsible for managing our Directorate’s change portfolio, including senior leadership relationship management, working with the delivery teams around resourcing and leading the PMO to drive innovation and change from the heard of Corporate Development.

• PMO Assurance Lead: Yes, that’s right, there are two Assurance Leads. We will be looking at each role to identify key areas of responsibility for each.
• PMO Analysts: Two analysts in our team are here to provide the insights and support to keep the delivery teams meeting their targets and realising their benefits. You will work with them to produce key reports and conduct initial analysis on our PMO systems.

We are also looking for a PMO Innovation Lead who will be responsible for driving improvements and innovation in the Change Agency and wider Corporate Development.

About the borough

Waltham Forest is an ambitious Borough. Driven by culture and the innate creativity of our residents, we have developed innovative ways to build our communities and transform our Council. As London’s first Borough of Culture we are creating more opportunities to empower our residents and boost their life chances.

Over the coming year we will work with our communities to set out what we want Waltham Forest to be by 2030; how that relates to the ever-changing world, and what that means for the services and infrastructure that we need to provide. We need to make sure that everything we are doing today supports that vision, and helps our residents succeed in an increasingly uncertain world.

Our Corporate Development department has been fundamental to Waltham Forest’s successful transformation. We have all of the levers to deliver sustainable change - human resources, digital, ICT, communications, culture, policy, strategy and change services.

This is an exciting time to join Waltham Forest – London’s first Borough of Culture and the winner of the MJ “Council of the year” award.  We are busy creating a Council for the future and this is your chance to join an ambitious, customer focussed Corporate Development directorate during a time of change and transformation.