Head of Operations

**Job Purpose**
Inspire and lead the operations team to consistently deliver sport and active wellbeing services and other key strategic priorities that contribute to an outstanding customer experience. The postholder will be a member of the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) expected to promote UofG Sport as a core part of the student experience, champion change, and play a lead role in the overall progression of this exciting, rewarding and people focused service.

**Main Duties and Responsibilities**
1. Inspire, lead, and encourage a culture of outstanding service delivery, customer experience, and continuous improvement across the operations team.
2. Overall responsibility for ensuring the highly effective and efficient operation of all indoor, outdoor and satellite sports facilities, ensuring services and resources are aligned to strategic priorities and service improvements.
3. Provide visible leadership in all aspects of health, safety and compliance, ensuring standards are set, understood, and maintained, meeting or exceeding our statutory obligations. This includes identification of risks, implementation of risk reduction and control measures, and leading on business continuity planning to provide reliability and resilience of all services.
4. Manage current and future infrastructure developments, including the 10-year capital investment and life cycle upgrade of all UofG Sport’s equipment and facilities, to ensure regular maintenance, transformation, and modernisation of facilities and equipment.
5. Provide expert intelligence, advice and guidance for all activities carried out within the operations area, driving change and service improvements to ensure UofG Sport is recognised as a leader in local markets and the HE sector.
6. Identify service shortfalls and coordinate the design and delivery of solutions to maximise service quality, efficiency, and continuity.
7. Through detailed periodic reporting, forecasts and analyses, identify trends, test solutions and report on progress to support the resolution of operations issues.
8. Lead on the programming of UofG Sport’s facilities to ensure optimal space utilisation, customer satisfaction, reputation, and business performance. Engage with, and influence, stakeholders and industry experts across group exercise, club sport, recreational sport, and event areas to shape plans.
9. In conjunction with Finance colleagues, responsible for setting annual budgets and devising longer term financial projections across the operations function. This will include managing progress against budgets and identifying any trends and ensuring appropriate action is taken to address any anomalies.
10. Other duties commensurate with the role.

**Knowledge, Qualifications, Skills and Experience**

**Knowledge and Qualifications**

**Essential**:

A1 Ability to demonstrate the competencies required to undertake the duties associated with this level of post having acquired the necessary professional knowledge and management skills in a similar or number of different specialist roles. Or, Scottish Credit and Qualification Framework level 9,10 or 11 (Ordinary/Honours Degree, Post Graduate Qualification), or equivalent, including being professionally qualified in relevant discipline, with a broad range of professional experience in a management role(s).
A2 Nationally recognised Health & Safety qualification or ability to gain within 12 months of appointment (e.g., IOSH).

**Desirable**:

B1 Well-developed knowledge of legislation and good practice in sports governance and safeguarding.
B2 Certification or training in project management.

**Skills**

**Essential**:

C1 Ability to lead and manage diverse groups of colleagues to drive change.
C2 Excellent interpersonal skills that build trust, respect, and rapport with a wide range of individuals/groups.
C3 Highly developed written and oral communication skills including ability to write strategy/policy documents and deliver presentations to a wide range of audiences.
C4 High level organisational and planning skills, including the ability to actively scan for, identify, and prioritise projects, and produce effective strategies and business plans.
C5 Strong financial literacy including managing budgets with the ability to write for different audiences and for different purposes, and to produce and analyse complex source material, information, and data.
C6 Ability to think calmly and clearly in crisis management situations, with associated problem solving and decision-making skills.
C7 Ability to tackle mediocrity in people and systems, even when it is difficult to do so.

**Experience**:
**Essential**
E1 Experience of successfully leading and motivating a team, developing people, managing performance, and fostering engagement.
E2 Experience of service operations leadership and management, with proven involvement in influencing strategic decisions and successfully implementing strategic initiatives.
E3 Experience of communicating and i