Project Support Officer

About us

The UCL Estate comprises over 240 buildings, more than 6.5 million square feet of academic accommodation and around 4500 owned student bedrooms. The location, scale, variety and complexity of the estate are unparalleled in the sector, including world-leading research, teaching, offices and student accommodation within our Bloomsbury and UCL East campus, at Stratford.

Together, Campus Experience and Infrastructure and Estates Development (CE&I and ED) is responsible for managing all aspects of the UCL Estate from the strategic to the operational, including property asset management, master-planning, capital projects and seamless end to end operational support. The function comprises approximately. 350 FM and property professionals, project managers and customer facing operational colleagues.

This key activity supports the student and campus experience for our 46,000 students and 13,000 staff across our sites. From providing student accommodation, security and catering, to delivering an estates masterplan and all forms of capital projects in a sustainable manner. We are a collective of technical professionals who work together to deliver a resilient, functional, and vibrant estate.

About the role

We are recruiting a full-time permanent Project Support Officer (hybrid working) to support project management professionals in UCL Estates to ensure the successful delivery of the Capital Programme, Minor Works and Strategic Maintenance Programme (SMP) and the wider Estates strategic initiatives.

The PSO will facilitate project governance processes to ensure projects and programmes are properly managed to meet defined governance arrangements including approvals/stage-gate processes throughout the project lifecycle, customer and other stakeholder engagement, co-ordination across teams etc. The role is not intended to remove responsibility for best practice project management from those professionals – but rather to support and facilitate.

The Project Support Officer (PSO) will work both independently and in coordination with other project/programme management roles..

The PSO will be assigned to support and enhance the management of both construction and non-construction projects and programmes. At any one time the individual would be providing support to a variety of different projects and/or programmes.

About you

• Understanding and/or previous experience of project management and of working in a project environment (e.g. awareness of risk registers, project plans, governance etc.)
• Proven ability to work with Project and Programme Management Software tools
• Good standard of education; highly literate and numerate
• Excellent IT skills in the MS Office suite
• Good action and minute-taking skills
• Ability to communicate effectively in writing and verbally to a wide range of people at all levels including complex and/or technical issues to non-specialists
• Excellent organisational and time management skills. Ability to multi-task and prioritise effectively across multiple projects/programmes
• Curiosity, ability to use initiative and problem solve effectively
• Accurate and methodical with strong attention to detail
• Strong relationship building and interpersonal skills
• Ability to work effectively in a matrix management reporting structure
• UCL Ways of Working for professional services
• Ability to take proactive steps where you see an opportunity to fulfil a need
• Delivery of work to the agreed standards
• Building rapport and being comfortable with others across different cultures and backgrounds

What we offer

As well as the exciting opportunities this role presents we also offer some great benefits some of which are below:

41 Days holiday (including 27 days annual leave 8 bank holiday and 6 closure days)
Defined benefit career average revalued earnings pension scheme (CARE)
Cycle to work scheme and season ticket loan
On-Site nursery
On-site gym
Enhanced maternity, paternity and adoption pay
Employee assistance programme: Staff Support Service
Discounted medical insurance

Our commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

As London’s Global University, we know diversity fosters creativity and innovation, and we want our community to represent the diversity of the world’s talent. We are committed to equality of opportunity, to being fair and inclusive, and to being a place where we all belong.

We therefore particularly encourage applications from candidates who are likely to be underrepresented in UCL’s workforce.

These include people from Black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds; disabled people; LGBTQI+ people; and for our Grade 9 and 10 roles, women.

You can read more about our commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion here : https://www.ucl.ac.uk/equality-diversity-inclusion/