Head of Transition WCPD First Trenitalia West Coast Rail

Avanti West Coast; London; On-site; GBP 90,000; Full time

Job description

Job Description

Were West Coast Partnership Development (WCPD) and were shaping new high-speed train services for the UK. Its a once-in-a-generation opportunity to bring about a step change in rail travel and we are excited to play an important part. Working in partnership with HS2 Ltd, FirstGroup, Trenitalia, and the Department for Transport, were designing and developing the new services which will run on the new High Speed 2 railway and the existing West Coast Main Line.

Our goal is to maximise the governments investment to create a world-class railway with faster journey times, more capacity, and a customer experience thats second to none.

Our vision is for the High-Speed Services to be the best travel experience in Britain. One that is easy, comfortable, and impressive. Well do this by keeping things simple, removing sources of stress, and prioritising our customers.

Head of Transition.

The Head of Transition will be responsible for developing and delivering a programme of strategic change that will ensure WCPD are ready to launch of high speed services. This will be a complex programme, that will require a significant change in the business outlook and scale to take WCPD from the current Design Phase, where we are advising on future requirements, through to being the operator of services.

You will collaborate closely with key stakeholders, including Avanti West Coast, the Department for Transport and HS2 to ensure that everything is in place to launch services and deliver the end state. To achieve this you will need excellent stakeholder skills and extensive experience of delivering strategic change programmes. Strong political sensitivities will be required to navigate and align a diverse stakeholder community.

All of this will need to be delivered through a rapidly expanding team. The Head of Transition will play a key role in defining and growing a team to cover the wider needs of transition and deliver high quality outcomes in a complex and uncertain context.

The Key Responsibilities Of The Role Include

1. Establishing, leading and maintaining a high functioning Transition team that supports the launch of high speed services and the delivery of the end state, ensuring the team meets current needs efficiently and resiliently and is effectively right-sized in anticipation of future requirements.
2. Defining, costing and delivering of WCPDs Transition Plan and Transitional Programme, a major programme of strategic change that will take WCPD from the design phase through to the start of operations.
3. Developing and leading a change management programme to support the delivery of the Transitional Programme ensure WCPD culture, approach and scale is appropriate to current and future needs.
4. Successful engagement, consensus building and negotiation with key stakeholders including HS2 Ltd and Network Rail, ensuring the WCPD is able to deliver its elements of the transition programme, and that it supports and challenges other stakeholders to deliver theirs.
5. Working with WCP colleagues to embed transition needs in all WCPD recommendations, scopes, report and outputs and ensure effective integration of all existing workstreams into transition.
6. Developing of a pragmatic agreement with the Department for Transport on working arrangement and contract management approaches that will enable the agile and flexible delivery of transition.

You will ensure productive, effective and efficient relationships with key stakeholders including:

• WCP colleagues
• WCPD and Avanti Directors
• HS2 Ltd and Network Rail (NR), including up to Director level
• Department for Transport (DfT) policy, finance, and commercial team.
• Office of the Rail Regulator (ORR)
• Representatives of other train operating companies (TOCs)
• Stakeholder Groups across all workstreams.

The role is based in London.

Salary is circa £90,000 per annum.

West Coast Partnership Development

West Coast Partnership comprises two distinct parts Avanti West Coast and West Coast Partnership Development. Avanti West Coast runs the InterCity West Coast train services from London to north England, north Wales and Scotland.

Our work in WCPD is focused on developing plans for what the new high-speed services will look like (customer experience), how they will work (railway operations) and how we will start running new services and trains (mobilisation). Over the next 10 years we will develop and implement a programme (HS2 Ltd are building the new railway and associated infrastructure).

Your application

At WCPD, we value the differences that make each of us outstanding! We recognise the benefits of building a diverse workforce and employing people from diverse backgrounds, which includes their race, religion, age, gender, gender identity, disability and sexual orientation.

Everyone who joins us becomes part of our close-knit team. We're committed to ensuring that we are expansive and a place where people are encouraged to be themselves, and not an edited version to fit in. A place where differences are encouraged, recognised, accepted and put to good use!