Senior Strategy Consultant

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HOURS: 37.5 hours per week, Monday-Friday, 8.30am-5.00pm

SALARY: Salary dependent upon experience, plus annual bonus opportunity

LOCATION: Hybrid. Office based potentially in Leeds, Teesside, or Nottingham with an opportunity for home working

REPORTS TO: Associate Director

BACKGROUND

Sewell Group is a multi-disciplined group of companies operating across the North of England. As a family business, it has a long and illustrious history dating back to 1876. Alongside its retail division, which operates 13 fuel and convenience stores across East Yorkshire, Sewell Estates is a collective of built environment businesses made up of Sewell Investments, Sewell Construction, Sewell Facilities Management, Illingworth and Gregory, Community Ventures, and Shared Agenda.

At the heart of the business' vision and strategy is delivering value for the communities it serves, promoting opportunities by employing local people and investing in developing talent, as well as giving back to communities and supporting the regional economy through commissioning the local supply chain.

Sewell pride themselves on their commitment to support, train, develop and reward employees. In return, they ask that their employees work hard, live the company behaviours, and have some fun along the way. Culture is a massive part of the day-to-day life at Sewell and its people follow core principles of being Positive; Professional; Customer Focused; Team Players; and Always Doing the Right Thing.

In 2021 the Group was recognised as one of only 18 businesses across the country in the Queen's Awards for Enterprise for Promoting Opportunity - the most prestigious accolade for UK businesses. We have also featured in the Top 100 Best Companies to work for list six times, including being placed in the Top 50 large companies to work for in 2022.

Community Ventures is seeking talented individuals to join the team. We provide healthcare strategy, strategic estates advice, business case services and programme/project management solutions to a wide range of customers across the UK. The Team is also contracted to provide management services to ten Lift Co business across the north of England managing a £250m health and social care portfolio.

ROLE OVERVIEW

This is an exciting opportunity for someone looking to take the next steps or a new challenge in their career, working as a lead member of a growing team.

Community Ventures' vision is to be the consultant partner of choice to our customers and our mission is to achieve excellence in our advice and our solutions, delivering long-term added value to public services.

Our current workload spans local, regional, and national advisory roles for all aspects of the health sector - primary, community, acute and mental health - as well as support to local authorities and other public sector organisations.

We are looking for someone who will embrace the complexity and breadth of this role, and who relishes the challenge of working creatively to understand and help solve our clients' estate problems.

You will primarily work as the lead advisor on some of our most complex commissions, setting direction and managing a delivery team, as well as being responsible for producing your own outputs to our high standards.

In return we offer a progressive role within a forward thinking company, where our people are empowered and enabled to identify and create their own opportunities for where their future career may take them.

ROLE RESPONSIBILITIES

STRATEGIC ESTATES ADVICE

• To lead on commissions, providing advice to our customers and partners as required (e.g., options appraisals, feasibility studies, estates strategies, PIDs, Business Case authoring, workshop facilitation, space utilisation, other research), either solely, as part of the wider team or with external advisors as needed.
• Liaise with external clients and stakeholders to create new strategic estates opportunities for Community Ventures in line with the business plan, working with colleagues, partners and shareholders.
• Appoint supply chain partners and advisors to support delivery.
• Effectively lead internal and external multidisciplinary teams.
• To professionally represent Community Ventures at external meetings and events.
• Take on commission management responsibilities - monitoring workloads/ deadlines and commercial performance.
• Line management of junior/ graduate consultants.

CLIENT/CUSTOMER LIAISON

• A significant proportion of this role is client facing - acting as the lead consultant/professional on our strategic advice commissions- presenting our offer to the client and ensuring the timelines and quality of our delivery.
• Promoting and presenting a professional personal and company brand in all dealings.
• Developing and nurturing successful and rewarding relationships with colleagues and the supply chain.
• Listening and understanding the client's needs and developing new client relationships.
• Ensuring a working environment exists where complete client satisfaction is at the forefront of every team member's mind.

GENERAL

• Support the production of board reports and performance reports against the business plan KPI's.
• Spotting opportunities for continuous improvement of our tools, processes and systems.
• Understanding and mitigating risk to the business.
• Support Community Ventures in the pursuit of new opportunities and business development as required, producing fee proposals and bid support for potential commissions and clients.
• Provide information to support the Director and Associate Directors with workload planning and forecasting.
• Leading on your own strategic internal projects suited to your skills and expertise - in the past this has included quality management, implementation of new software etc.

Requirements

As well as exhibiting a polite and approachable attitude, displaying plenty of energy, initiative, professionalism, commitment and a strong team ethos, the suitable person will have the following:

ESSENTIAL

• Hold a formal degree qualification (or 5+ years relevant experience)
• Experience in contributing to/delivering the preparation of estate strategies, and Business Cases in accordance with the HM Treasury Green Book guidance
• Experience of working within public sector, health, social care, local authority or education sectors
• General project management experience
• Experience of delivering against competing priorities and deadlines while also directing the work of teams/individuals
• You will be resilient and have the credibility to engage with a wide range of local and regional stakeholders
• You will possess excellent communication and facilitation skills to harness and build positive relationships, whilst being able to put forward alternative points of view and respectfully challenge
• The ability to lead a team in a busy working environment, but also to work unsupervised at times and manage your own workload
• Excellent listening and communication skills
• The ability to learn and work with new technology and software
• Good decision-making skills
• A good knowledge of Microsoft Office packages, in particular Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint
• Have effective and efficient time management skills
• Awareness of the importance of confidentiality
• Have a thorough approach/high levels of attention to detail and accuracy
• Be able to implement new and improved ways of working
• A full, valid UK driving licence and own transport

DESIRABLE

• Experience working in or around healthcare service planning and/or service change programmes
• Healthcare planning and strategy experience
• Formal Better Business Cases qualification
• Membership of an appropriate professional body
• Understanding of current national healthcare policy, strategic direction and objectives and national programmes
• Working knowledge of LIFT, PFI, Procure 22 or other related frameworks

Community Ventures is an equal opportunities employer, recruiting within the guidelines of the Equality Act 2010. We are committed to the promotion of diversity and equal opportunity, as an employer and in the delivery of our products and services.

As a committed safe employer an appropriate enhanced DBS (criminal record) check will be required for the successful candidate of this role.

Benefits

• Salary dependent on experience
• Annual bonus opportunity
• 25 days holiday (plus Bank Holidays), rising with length of service to 30 days
• Being a Co-Owner of Sewell Estates, learn more here: Employee Ownership - Sewell Group (sewell-group.co.uk)
• Auto enrolment pension
• Staff discounts
• High street & retail discount schemes
• Bike 2 work scheme
• Technology scheme
• Paid parental leave and sickness absence
• Free use of the Coyle Health Gym
• Click here to view all of our employee benefits