About the role:
Responsibilities
- Work as part of a small team to deliver effective technical consultation and engagement with local authorities that will be directly affected by construction and operation of the project.
- Take a leading role in building relationships and advocacy with officers at both a strategic and technical level within these local authorities.
- Work with the Local Government Lead and Local Government Coordinator to draft and deliver Statements of Common Ground (SOCG) with the project's Tier one local authorities, while providing advice and input into Tier two local authority SOCGs.
- Establish/maintain trusted channels of communication between the officers and the project team by acting as the voice of project to the external stakeholders and ensuring those stakeholders views are heard internally.
- Work, as part of the team, to revise and regularly update the stakeholder engagement plans for each of the local authorities.
- Organise and deliver appropriate meetings, events and workshops to engage with local authority officers at all levels.
- Keep accurate, well written and timely records of all stakeholder interactions between officers and project/stakeholder staff, ensuring CRM systems are kept up to date and that the information from those meetings is shared appropriately, both internally and with stakeholders. Ensure there is a robust audit trail of all consultation activity on the CRM system.
- Draft high quality, well written reports, presentations, documents and briefings for varied internal and external audiences, as required.
- Work with other External Affairs colleagues to support the consultation process, including at external stakeholder events, such as community roadshows and other public engagement events, as required.
- Ensure programme and reporting information is provided to the Programme and Data Manager.
Previous experience:
- Experience of working in or closely with local authorities at a technical level.
- Experience in drafting and agreeing SOCGs.
- Experience of working on major infrastructure projects, especially road projects, or major developments for public or private bodies.
- Experience in understanding and/or dealing with the complex and interrelated issues of planning, environment, transport, design, property and engineering matters on major development projects with local authorities or other public bodies.
- Experience of working in a stakeholder relations team.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
- Ability to work collaboratively with internal and external stakeholders, and to identify, develop and maintain a strong network with those stakeholders.
- Understanding of local authority decision making and the political imperatives behind such decisions.
- Understanding of the requirements associated with Development Consent Orders.
- Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to schedule work, deliver to tight deadlines, respond to changing situations and use personal initiative.
- Well organised with an ability to plan and deliver a programme of events/activities.
- Advanced Microsoft Office skills, including Word, PowerPoint, Excel and ideally databases.
- Highly collaborative and demonstrates an ability to identify, develop and maintain a strong network of internal and external stakeholders.
- Long term contract opportunity
- Opportunity to support a large UK infrastructure project
- Competitive rates