Head of Estates (Campus Development) – NERC HO

Overview

In this role you lead the NERC Estates Transformation Programme, ensuring delivery of the Estates Strategy and alignment with UKRI goals. You will govern programme delivery, budgets, risks, and stakeholder engagement, working with Centre leads to ensure coordinated action. You’ll champion data-driven decision making and drive decarbonisation and efficiency across the built environment. This is a strategic, cross‑functional leadership role with a strong focus on governance and continuous improvement.

Pay / Benefits

• defined benefit pension scheme
• 30 days’ annual leave + 10.5 days (public/privilege)
• employee discounts and offers
• employee assistance programme
• flexible working options
• wellbeing initiatives

Responsibilities

• Provide leadership for the entire estates transformation programme with clear alignment to the Estates Strategy
• Convert organisational objectives into a structured programme with deliverables, schedules, dependencies, and resource needs
• Advocate for the programme within UKRI and beyond
• Oversee programme governance, strategic risk management and assurance activities
• Manage budgeting and financial tracking for the programme
• Maintain programme documentation (plans, risk registers, dashboards, logs, benefits)
• Engage senior stakeholders across Centres and UKRI
• Ensure collection and handover of building safety information to statutory duty holders (Golden Thread)
• Harmonise interfaces with other estate-related workstreams to avoid duplication and identify shared opportunities
• Foster data-driven decision making and continuous improvement across projects
• Prepare executive-level updates and briefing papers
• Deputise for the Associate Director for Estates and Sustainability when needed

Key requirements

• Proven experience in an estates leadership role
• Experience in leading complex estates or capital programmes within time, cost and scope constraints
• NEC, APM, RICS or IWFM accreditation
• Strong financial oversight including budgeting, forecasting and transparent reporting
• Experience producing and governing programme control documentation
• Governance and assurance capability with compliance to organisational standards
• Ability to identify, assess and manage project risks and opportunities
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills
• Experience of decarbonisation activity in built environments

• stakeholder management
• communication
• strategic influence
• programme governance and assurance
• financial management and budgeting
• risk management and controls

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