About Spring:

Spring is the water sector's innovation centre of excellence, launched in December 2021. As an innovation accelerator, Spring enables collaboration within and beyond the water sector. Our mission is to make the water sector a global leader in open innovation by attracting, connecting, and supporting innovators across the industry. We strive to accelerate transformation by delivering the Water Innovation Strategy 2050.

The Role:

The Water Innovation Strategy Project Lead will lead a "light-touch" refresh of the strategy, focusing on defining the different players involved and clarifying their respective responsibilities. This position demands both research and execution skills, requiring an assessment of how the sector has changed over the last five years and the development of updated strategy content. This is a fixed term role, contracted for 12 months.

Key responsibilities:

• Conduct research to identify changes in the sector's innovation ecosystem stakeholder roles since 2020.
• Facilitate workshops and sessions with stakeholders to gather insights and validate findings.
• Communicate key changes and recommendations to governing group.
• Develop high-quality deliverables for publication, including written content and supporting materials.
• Work with our Marketing and Communications team to plan the launch and promotion of updated materials.
• Support the organisation's broader strategic objectives through effective communication and coordination.

Experience Required:

• Our ideal candidate can clearly demonstrate understanding of the water industry in the UK and Ireland and likely has around 5 years of experience.
• We're looking for someone with proven experience of managing projects, influencing stakeholders, and embedding change in complex environments.
• Applicants should have experience with designing, running, and executing research projects, and creating compelling outputs based on their findings.

Skills

• Strong planning, delivery, and organisational skills. These are needed effectively manage this complex and dynamic project that has the potential to instigate significant change in our partner organisations. Applicants should be comfortable with translating strategic thinking into actionable plans that they then deliver.
• Communication and leadership skills. This role will require you to articulate complex issues and ensure alignment with a variety of stakeholders with mixed skills, experience, and personality types.
• Relationship skills. This role will require you to establish and maintain excellent working relationships with a diverse group of stakeholders, from C-suite to front line teams, ensuring that the value Spring provides to them is understood and quantified.
• Workshop planning and execution. The ideal candidate is comfortable planning, coordinating, facilitating, and presenting at workshops.
• Independent working. This role will fit into a small but busy team, so applicants need to be comfortable with working independently, both remotely and centrally in our London office.
• Comfort with ambiguity. We're looking for individuals that can navigate challenges, shifting priorities, and a fast-paced environment. The ideal candidate will be able to demonstrate a high tolerance for sudden changes and with effective planning allow enough flexibility to adapt quickly

Experience requirements

• Must have the right to remain and work in the UK.
• Must be willing to travel anywhere in the UK or Ireland.
• Ideal, but not essential is access to public transports and the vast majority of journeys will be by rail.
• Availability for overnight stays away from home, both in London and around the UK. We host a team meeting in London once a month and you will likely need to complete site visits that require an overnight stay.

Benefits

• A creative and innovative environment with a driven team that sits at the heart of innovation in the water sector.
• Working in a kind and dynamic small team, in a high trust environment with autonomy over your own work.
• Spring will operate as a hybrid team, splitting time between working from home and the new office space in London, with travel throughout the UK as required.
• Private health insurance, includes optical care for regular computer use, but not dental.
• Pension scheme: 3% personal contribution and 6% company contribution.
• Annual leave: 27 days of holiday per year, plus bank holidays (pro-rata).
• Death in service, 3 x annual salary.
• As a purpose-driven company, all of Spring's employees will have three days per year to engage in environmental charity work.

Salary

£45-50 DOE