Job Description

Riversmeet House, Hafren House, Mance House, Sentinel House, AQUA HOUSE BIRMINGHAM B3 1AQ

Grade

Staff Grade 5

Post Type

Permanent

Working Pattern

Full Time

Role Type

Environment & Sustainability, Information Technology, Operational Delivery, Knowledge & Information Management

Salary Minimum

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Job description

As part of the area integrated planning team, you will be at the heart of ensuring the area is resilient and ready to respond to drought to safeguard the environment and water supplies.

This is an opportunity to shape our incident management response to drought and build area drought resilience. You will work across the Integrated Environment Planning (IEP) and Area Incident Management (AIM) teams to ensure our Concept of Operations (ConOps) is incident ready, and work with your local drought experts to plan and deliver drought response improvements. You will work across the hub to ensure that each area in their hub has a current drought plan, a resilient level of drought capability and incident capacity. As part of the national drought communities of practice (water supply, agriculture, regulation), you will help deliver lessons learnt from recent drought, develop guidance (internal and external), develop and deliver training and work with external partners in testing and training.

In addition, you will:

• Shape approaches to drought planning - providing advice and technical support to area, pan-area and national teams.
• Providing support to key incident roles helping us meet the demands of improving our incident preparedness.
• Support area and national operations input during drought, being agile to meet the business need.
• Act as a drought specialist to deliver drought management, planning, preparedness, and response.
• Guide and advise others on drought issues, ensuring decisions are made on sound technical grounds
• Maintain links with national drought groups / staff on behalf of WMD Area - raising area issues and feeding back to Area Drought Leads. This includes the national drought practitioners\' group.
• Identify external engagement opportunities across the area and hub
• Participate and lead projects to deliver learning from recent drought and planning for drought.

The team

The role will sit within the Integrated Environment Planning team providing support and building a knowledge base on drought planning activity and response to maintain environmental performance within the area and the wider business.

We are committed to having a diverse and inclusive workforce to reflect the communities we serve. We welcome flexible working patterns for all our vacancies, including job share, so please include any information regarding your preferred working arrangements on your application.

Experience/skills required

Your excellent interpersonal and project management skills will be complimented by your ability to achieve results, solve problems, and communicate technical issues in a clear and concise manner to a range of audiences. Your technical knowledge may be drought based, or incident management with a background in water resources and a passion to develop your expertise further.

Through your experience you will be able to demonstrate the following:

• Good interpersonal skills, communication, and presentation skills.
• Self-motivated and able to work on your own initiative or as part of a dispersed team.
• Excellent communication skills and experience of building relationships.
• Ability to work across Area teams, pan-area, OCS and E&B for a joined up and nationally consistent approach.
• Good judgement, problem solving and decision-making skills.
• Good planning & organisational skills, with the ability to handle multiple priorities and deliver to tight timescales.

Contact and additional information

This is a permanent role. For further information contact the team leader Ruth Meek ruth.meek@environment-agency.gov.uk or drought lead Vicky Antram vicky.antram@environment-agency.gov.uk.

As responding to incidents is a central part of what we do, you will be required to have an incident role and make yourself available to respond to incidents or provide business continuity support during an incident. This may attract an additional payment and full training and alternative working arrangements will be available to support you with your incident role

Interviews will be held remotely from week commencing 11th September.

Job description attachment 1

Candidate pack

Closing Date:

03/09/2023, 23:55 hours

Level of security checks required

Basic Check

Competence 1

Achieves Results

Description

Please note we do not assess CVs. Answers to these competency questions will be used for interview selection so ensure you draw out your skills and experience in your responses.

You may find it helpful to research the STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) approach when formulating your response. We also encourage you to refer to the "EA capability dictionary" which can be viewed in the attached candidate pack.

Give an example of when you have planned and delivered a challenging piece of work to a deadline, where delivery relied on others\' input as much as your own and what you did to achieve this?

Competence 2

Communicates Effectively

Description

Describe a time where you have communicated important and vital information to a technical audience to achieve a stated outcome or result?

Competence 3

Takes Decisions and Solves Problems

Description

Describe a situation when you successfully resolved a technical issue and the steps you took to achieve this?

If you are applying from the Civil Service please note that the Environment Agency is not a part of HM Civil Service and you would not be a Crown Servant in the event of being appointed. Therefore, you will not be eligible for continuous service. For applicants who currently work in local government or other bodies listed in the Redundancy Payments (Continuity of Employment in Local Government etc) (Modification) Order 1999, you may be eligible for continuous service for the purpose of calculating any future redundancy payment. If you are unsure of your status then you should contact your own HR Team.

We are fully committed to having a diverse and inclusive workforce to reflect the communities we serve. We welcome flexible working patterns for all our vacancies, including job share, so please include clearly any information regarding your preferred working arrangements on your application.

We also have a Guaranteed Interview Policy to support those with a disability who are seeking employment. We have committed to guaranteeing an interview to anyone with a disability whose application meets the minimum criteria for the post.

The Environment Agency, as a Non-Departmental Public Body, is committed to providing value for money and utilises Central Government frameworks and contracts for all external recruitment needs. For this reason, we are unable to engage with the market directly through post, email or phone calls . Should you wish to become a support supplier on one of these frameworks or contracts please visit for more information.

Environment Agency