Your new company

Hays has been retained to recruit an Operations Technical Lead for a large semi-state organisation, working across Waterford City and County.

Your new role

• Responsible for supporting the resolution of technical/engineering issues as they arise within the region.
• Responsible for reporting progress on service risk identification, mitigation and escalation through new reporting structures to be developed.
• Provide sound technical analysis of the escalated operational, maintenance and repair issues across both Water Treatment and Network assets. This includes the provision of local knowledge of assets and operational performance capabilities to support the timely resolution of non-routine, specialised activities (e.g. nuisance issues, troubleshooting equipment failures, network and infrastructure failures).
• Responsible for making technically correct operational, maintenance and repair decisions in a timely manner (utilising the available data), with efficient use of resources and budget.
• Support Direct labour Water Network capital activity such as Mains Rehabilitation, Main laying, Connection and Meter Installations and other work on the Water Network including design work as required.
• Support the resolution of operational, maintenance and repair issues at a Regional level at first attempt. This includes ensuring that there are minimal escalations of issues to other functions and driving to resolve problems within Water Operations as quickly as possible to minimise delay and disruption to customer service.
• Work collaboratively to act as a technical interface for other specialised teams within the organisation, including Regional Operations, Process Optimisation, Water & Wastewater Compliance, Asset Intelligence, OPEM, Portfolio Operations, Management and DBO Management teams.
• Support the Regional Asset Operations interface with Asset Management, in particular with the Asset Planning functional area.
• Liaise with the Water Portfolio Operations Specialist as required to support the design, construction and handover phases of an Asset Delivery project.
• Act as the technical interface to external bodies e.g. Local Authorities, Road Authorities, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and assist with audits or information requests as necessary.
• Provide technical oversight of third parties/contractors; Permits-to-work, Permits-to-Enter, Specialised Works Scoping, Method-Statements Reviews.
• Support line manager with complex water system integrity challenges, acting as an escalation point for determining cause of challenge, forecasting the impact of challenge, defining scope for site surveys and investigations, and identifying options for resolving challenges.
• Ensure all information (including service risks) are accurately recorded and promptly reported for audit purposes and service risk escalations using the technology systems provided.
• Participate in out of hours and standby working as required.
• Provide network and engineering support as required in incident response.
• Escalate issues and ensure data capture on issues that are relevant to the development of operational, maintenance and repair plans to manager.
• Responsible for monitoring and reporting KPIs for processes over which they have ownership.
• Perform line and performance management duties as required
• Carry out any other duties deemed necessary and / or required by management.
• Identify and submit water infrastructure intervention requests to Water Asset Planning, support in engaging with the relevant asset owners and/or responsible parties within Asset Operations, providing supplementary information to Asset Planning as required.

What you'll need to succeed

• Third level qualification in engineering/related discipline or equivalent work experience.
• Minimum of 5 years relevant experience.
• Experience / understanding of working within a strong health & safety culture.
• Knowledge of water or wastewater treatment and/or the maintaining and repairing of water or wastewater treatment and network assets is an advantage.
• Knowledge of risk management principles and guidelines (ISO 31000) and risk identification at water and wastewater assets.
• Knowledge of the application of the current legislation, standards, processes and procedures relevant to water abstraction and treatment.
• Local knowledge of assets and operational performance capabilities to support the timely resolution of non-routine, specialised activities.
• Capable to work collaboratively across various function and achieve set objectives.
• Experience in a customer focused business.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Effective communication skills, to engage with a broad range of internal stakeholders and front line employees.
• Experience of line and performance management duties.
• Ability to make decisions based on analysis of information within a very fast paced, customer focused environment.
• Knowledge of managing process compliance.
• Financial analysis skills.

What you'll get in return

Excellent salary and package provided to the successful candidate.

What you need to do now

If you're interested in this role, click 'apply now' to forward an up-to-date copy of your CV, or call us now.

If this job isn't quite right for you, but you are looking for a new position, please contact us for a confidential discussion on your career.