Senior Portfolio Management Office (PMO) Advisor

Are you looking for an exciting and rewarding challenge leading and driving transformational change Are you passionate about making a difference

West Midlands Police is the second largest police force in the country serving a population of almost 2.8 million. Our mission is simple Working in partnership making communities safer. We want to be recognised as a police service that is big enough to cope with everything that is asked of us whilst showing we are small enough to care about the things that really matter to our communities.

These are exciting times for West Midlands Police. To help achieve our vision we are delivering an extensive and varied change and improvement portfolio. This will bring real transformational change supporting continuous performance and service improvement that truly makes a difference to our people and to the public.

This is an exciting opportunity for a Senior Portfolio Management Office (PMO) Advisor to join the PMO team within our Corporate Change Department and be part of a fantastic team of Project Managers Business Analysts and Change Practitioners dedicated to delivering change and transformation that enables West Midlands Police to provide an outstanding service to the communities we serve.

Role: Senior Portfolio Management Office (PMO) Advisor
Salary: 42897-48894

Location: Birmingham onsite/hybrid

The PMO plays a vital role in ensuring full transparency effective control and optimised delivery of WMPs Change Portfolio by designing and driving the Corporate Change Assurance Commissioning and Governance Frameworks.

The Senior PMO Advisor acts as deputy to the PMO Lead ensuring our frameworks are functional reporting is compliant and to a high standard and that governance and escalation processes are robust and coherent.

The Senior PMO Advisor will manage defined areas of the PMO service and work collaboratively across the organisation to plan and pro-actively support change governance commissioning and delivery activity. They will support the Corporate Change team and wider business to maintain a strong focus on business outcomes and benefits and will communicate a clear direction to senior managers colleagues and partners.

The role supports with the identification management and reporting of benefits both within the Change Portfolio and wider organisational activity to support the strategic objectives of WMP.

The successful candidate will have a continuous improvement mindset and be competent in benefits risk issue and dependency management. They will champion innovative and collaborative approaches working closely with a wide variety of stakeholder groups to successfully maintain effective assurance and delivery of the change portfolio.

The successful candidate should demonstrate the following attributes:

• Strong problem solving and analytical skills with a high degree of accuracy and attention to detail
• The ability to undertake sensitive enquiries with high standards of integrity and professionalism
• Communicate clearly and with impact tailoring messages to different audiences to ensure understanding and engagement including senior levels
• Provide expert advice and guidance equipping change leaders and those supporting change with the appropriate approach tools and templates needed to successfully deliver change
• Strong ability to connect with others building trust and working effectively with diverse groups and individuals
• Demonstrate adaptability and creativity as part of a collaborative team committed to driving positive change and innovation

Key Responsibilities

• Oversees the delivery of the Change Portfolios Governance Framework and scheduling of boards within ensuring the framework is functional escalation processes are robust and that all packs created are compliant with the required standards including agenda setting and action/decision management
• Takes a lead role in quality assurance (QA) activities ensuring all relevant risks issues and dependencies are effectively escalated and portfolio delivery is optimised at all times
• Analyses and interprets the status and performance of the Corporate Change Portfolio to agreed timescales providing recommendations on trends major risks and critical issues to support management decisions
• Responsible for supporting the identification management and reporting of benefits both within the Change Portfolio and wider organisational activity to support the strategic objectives of WMP
• Ensure appropriate and proportionate levels of change control are applied to the delivery of the Corporate Change Portfolio
• Support the Commissioning and Triage process to feed into the Governance Framework including the Improvement and Innovation Portal (IIP)
• Manage and maintain the IIP. Responsible for configuration of the portal reporting requirements and quality assurance to ensure suggestions are processed in a timely & effective manner and system is functional
• Support the development and QA of cases for change and other governance documentation
• Support the management of a clear commissioning pipeline to ensure initiatives projects or improvement proposals are progressed in line with the Corporate Change Portfolio defined by the Forces strategy and vision
• Supports Change SLT in collaboration with HR to manage the recruitment processes for the Corporate Change department
• Provides advice and guidance to the department and wider organisation in terms of assurance commissioning & governance processes tools and templates
• Acts as an authority on best practice standards and procedures for organisational change
• Build and maintain excellent relationships with key stakeholders and work collaboratively with colleagues to support the delivery of the Corporate Change Portfolio
• The central co-ordination of Lessons Learned across the change portfolio to ensure all lessons are captured and where appropriate fed into Organisational Learning
• Liaise with Finance regarding monitoring of financial spend and benefits realisation
• Develop accurate and timely solutions documents and materials for all portfolio change controls and governance management purposes
• Contribute to other governance activities within the Corporate Change team and as defined by the PMO Lead
• Responsible for maintaining the Corporate Change team repository SharePoint and Teams channels. Undertaking configuration and permissions management duties and is the content editor for Corporate Change teams intranet pages
• Management and co-ordination of the Corporate Change team skills matrix training & development schedule.
• Acts as second in Command to the PMO Lead and Deputises for this role
• Any other duties commensurate with the role and band/grade

Knowledge and Experience

Essential:

• A minimum of 4 years experience of working in a PMO Project Management Change Management or equivalent experience with certification (foundation or practitioner) or on-the-job training from a centre of excellence
• Demonstrable experience of working to a high degree of accuracy with attention to detail
• Competent in end-to-end Benefits management within a Change environment
• Experience of identifying realisable benefits as part of a business case
• Competent in Risk Issue and Dependency management
• Experience of working with a wide variety of stakeholder groups including senior managers
• Excellent interpersonal communication and presentation skills
• Excellent organisational skills and able to demonstrate prioritisation of work to ensure all deadlines are met and stakeholder expectations managed
• Experience of working on own initiative and without supervision
• Experience of analysing developing maintaining and extracting data from management information systems and documentation
• Experience of organising and shaping complex information for inclusion in reports
• Mature planning skills and experience of implementing project management principles
• Proven Leadership ability
• Sensitivity to the needs of diverse communities served by the team
• Experienced and competent in the use of MS365 applications (specifically SharePoint Teams Forms Word Excel and PowerPoint as a minimum)

Desirable:

• PRINCE2 certification or equivalent (foundation or practitioner)
• Experience of autonomously managing projects and initiatives
• Benefits and/or Risk Management qualifications
• Trained in CI methodology (i.e. Lean Six Sigma)
• Educated to degree level
• Experience of managing projects within a public sector environment

Interviews

Likely to be taking place week commencing 23rd June 2025

Benefits

One of our key strategic aims is to be employer of choice and we believe in recognising and rewarding our people. By choosing to join West Midlands Police you will receive an enhanced benefits package including:

• Competitive remuneration with progression and professional development opportunities
• Access to an excellent pension scheme
• Enhanced annual leave in addition to public holiday entitlements
• Agile hybrid and flexi-time working
• Discounts across travel parking daily costs of living and leisure activities
• A comprehensive wellbeing package including 24/7 support free eye tests and flu jabs

If you would like any more information or to arrange a call to discuss the role more please contact Nicki Pearson PMO Lead:

Prospective officers and staff must be held to a higher standard of behaviour and accountability than members of the public and that therefore their right to privacy can be fettered in certain circumstances. This is to ensure that members of the police are fully aware and accountable for the unique powers entrusted to them and the standards of professional behaviour they swear to uphold.

Vetting

Successful applicants will be required to pass Management Vetting and Counter Terrorism Clearancescrutiny prior to commencing their role this will include a full background & financial disclosure as part of the vetting process

Medical

Appointment to this role may be dependent upon successfully completing medical checks which may include a drugs test and if required a fitness test.

Probationary Policy (Current WMP Staff):

Under the Probation Policy if you are currently in your probation period during your probationary period you will not be permitted to apply for alternative police staff roles within the Force unless there are exceptional circumstances. In such cases you would require the support of your line manager prior to applying for alternative roles and if successful your probationary period will start over.-Policies - Probation Period (Police Staff) ()

West Midlands Police is a Disability Confident Leader - the highest level an organisation can achieve under the scheme run by the Department of Work and Pensions. As part of our commitment we operate a Disability Confident Interview Scheme - all candidates who declare a disability and meet the essential criteria for the role will be offered an interview.

It is important to notethat there may be occasions where it is not practicable or appropriate to interview all disabled people who meet the essential criteria for the job. For example:in certain recruitment situations such as high-volume seasonal and high-peak times the employer may wish to limit the overall numbers of interviews offered to both disabled people and non-disabled these circumstances the employer could select the candidates whobestmeet the essential criteria for the job as they would do for non-disabled applicants.

Diversity and Inclusion Vision: Maximise the potential of people from all backgrounds through a culture of fairness and inclusion to deliver the best service for our communities