Project Support Officer

This role is a rare opportunity to play a part to bring about systematic change to the planning system and planning casework.

We are seeking ambitious individuals with great communication and organisational skills to join our highly performing, supportive and friendly teams across Natural England’s Sustainable Development work.

You will help shape and deliver legislative planning, policy reforms and infrastructure projects to ensure that they are customer focused, digitally enabled and sustainable in the long term with a shift to nature’s recovery at scale delivered through the planning system. Priority work areas include the Nature Restoration Fund, wider planning policy reforms and implementing Government reviews such as the Lead Environmental Regulator pilot (major projects/infrastructure development).

Assist the Project/Programme Manager to:

• Prepare, monitor and control the business case and project plan(s) to ensure that the project scope, cost, time frames and intended benefits are agreed. Support work to deliver the project against the baselined plans.
• Select and apply appropriate project management methodologies. Work to meet organisational standards for project delivery and understand assurance and approval requirements. Support the preparation of highlight reports as required by governance.
• Identify benefits and ensure they are understood, measured, tracked and owned, developing management and realisation plans as required.
• Ensure appropriate contract management resource is available, if commercial procurement is required.
• Prepare, monitor and control project spend in line with organisational and treasury standards and to the agreed project budget.
• Identify, evaluate and manage project issues/risks. Understand tolerances and escalation routes where required.
• Manage knowledge throughout the life cycle, including information management, records keeping and learning from lessons. Support the preparation of end of tranche/project closure reports. Prepare for and facilitate audits.
• Identify and manage stakeholders.

Commit to professional development, contribute to the project delivery profession and build networks to enable continuous improvement and build capability across the organisation.

• Demonstratable organisational skills, with experience of prioritising and working under pressure and at pace. (Essential)
• Experience of working in a project environment involving managing milestones, assumptions, dependencies, risks and budgets. (Essential)
• Excellent interpersonal, influencing and relationship-building skills. (Essential)
• Experienced user of Microsoft Office suite in particular;
  Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint. (Essential)
• Good analytical skills, and the ability to work collaboratively across teams to identify opportunities for securing better outcomes. (Essential)
• Good communications skills, be able to advocate for the work you are delivering, negotiating and influencing when required. (Essential)
• Proven self-motivation and resilience. (Essential)
• Project Management tool experience, e.g. Microsoft Project. (Essential)
• An understanding of the Defra 25 Year Environment Plan. (Essential)

We welcome and encourage applications from all communities. Natural England is accredited to the Disability Confident Scheme, which denotes organisations which have a positive attitude towards disabled people. Disabled applicants who meet the minimum requirements for the role at the shortlisting stage are guaranteed an invitation to interview.

If you require a reasonable adjustment at interview, or there is anything else you would like the panel to take into consideration, you should notify us of this at application stage where possible, or well in advance of your interview. We now provide primary interview questions in advance for all formal recruitments.

This vacancy uses competency-based assessment. We'll assess you against the competencies below during the selection process:

• Technical Skills and Knowledge
• Personal Effectiveness
• Work Delivery
• Putting People at the Heart of the Environment

When completing the application…