Deputy Head of Maritime Resilience 39 views

The Maritime Resilience has an exciting opportunity to be part of our team. This is a high-profile and fast-paced role for a self-starter that provides the opportunity to work on important maritime resilience issues across Government, with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and with industry stakeholders in the UK and internationally. The postholder will have the opportunity to engage with the full breadth of the maritime sector in order to develop and deliver DfT’s maritime resilience programme, ensuring that contingency planning, data and technology are at the heart of protecting the UK’s ports and maritime critical national infrastructure.

The UK’s maritime and marine sectors are key to Britain’s economy supplying at least £14 billion gross value added (GVA) and directly supporting 168,000 jobs. This puts our sector on the same scale as other high value industries like pharmaceutical manufacturing, aerospace, and the road freight industry.

Resilience and contingency planning is a critical capability for the UK. It ensures continued operations in times of crisis at our critical national infrastructure (CNI) and other major ports, for example, in response to extreme weather, industrial action and geopolitical events.

This critical area has never been of higher priority than at present, with global pandemics, EU exit and a changing climate all presenting major challenges to the sector. Ensuring the resilience and agility of our ports to be able to respond and deliver critical freight, food, fuel and medicine is essential to keeping Britain moving.

Role responsibilities will include but are not limited to

• Take a leading role in DfT’s response to maritime incidents, including disruption at major ports or vessel incidents. This will necessitate close working with a range of public and private agencies and organisations, including port and vessel operators, the MCA and the Kent Resilience Forum, amongst others.
• Build deep relationships and shared understanding of our respective operational and resilience objectives with key players across the maritime sector, including ports, freight and passenger vessel operators and trade bodies.
• Work closely with, and influence, colleagues in DfT, across Whitehall, with industry stakeholders and the wider resilience community to identify maritime-focused opportunities.
• Develop, sustain, and enhance non-security resilience exercise capability to support an increased national programme, including National Contingency Planning (NCP) and protection of Critical National Infrastructure (CNI).
• Support DfT’s maritime work on climate change adaptation and other key long-term planning exercises and strategies.
• Lead the cohort of out-of-hours maritime resilience coordinators.

For more information, please find the role profile attached.

About You

We are looking for someone who can support the team on policy development and help deliver a transformational agenda to tight timescales. You will have a solution-focused approach, be interested in the finer detail but also able to think “big picture” to create and maximise opportunities. You will have great communication skills with the confidence in setting direction by influencing at all levels. You will be able to lead your colleagues, engage with stakeholders and provide a quality service across the Maritime Directorate, the Transport Security Operations Centre, MCA, with Ministers, and across the maritime sector.

To that end we require the following experience:

• Building strong and productive relationships with key stakeholders both inside and outside of government.
• Working with senior leaders in an efficient and successful way.
• Strong communication skills including strong briefing skills.
• Experience in working in maritime, resilience, operational delivery or emergency response.

Additional Information

A minimum 60% of your working time should be spent at your principal workplace, although requirements to attend other locations for official business, or carry out detached duty in another DfT workplace, will also count towards this level of attendance.

This role will require occasional travel.

The post holder will be expected to be part of the 24/7 on call arrangements in the Department (for which additional allowances are paid). The on-call rota requires a commitment of approximately 7 days every 2 months (including some weekend cover).

We’ll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Seeing the Big Picture
• Making Effective Decisions
• Delivering at Pace
• Working Together

We only ask for evidence of these behaviours on your application form:

• Seeing the Big Picture

Being part of our brilliant Civil Service means you will have access to a wide range of fantastic benefits. We offer generous annual leave, attractive pension options, flexible working, inclusive working environments and much more to support a healthy work/life balance.