Most large outsourcing programmes are not lost in the design phase. They are lost in the weeks either side of go-live. This role owns those weeks.
You will take a major central government programme from contract award to a working service: mobilising incoming suppliers, running transition and cutover, and getting operations to a point where they can be handed to business as usual without the public noticing anything happened.
What you will actually do
- Own the mobilisation, transition and cutover plans, and hold suppliers to them
- Run supplier onboarding, readiness testing and assessment, and be willing to say when a supplier is not ready
- Establish who is responsible for what across incoming suppliers, outgoing providers and client teams, so nothing falls between them
- Identify continuity risk in the migration, with contingency and rollback positions that have been tested rather than assumed
- Manage the interfaces between transition, service design, commercial and operational teams, where a change in one invalidates the plan in another
- Give the programme board an honest readiness assessment ahead of each go/no-go decision
- Take the service through stabilisation into BAU against exit criteria agreed in advance rather than negotiated afterwards
Where the role sits
Reporting to the engagement lead and working alongside the client's transition and operations leadership, with continuous interfaces to incoming and outgoing suppliers and to the commercial team where contractual obligations and transition milestones interact.
What we are looking for
Someone who has done this before rather than planned it. That means a track record of mobilisation or transition on major outsourcing programmes, through to a live service, and ideally at least one that went wrong and had to be recovered. We are more interested in what you learned from a difficult transition than in a list of clean ones.
You will need the judgement to tell a real blocker from a nervous one, the credibility to hold a supplier to account without breaking the relationship, and the nerve to make a no-go call when the evidence supports it. That last one is the hardest part of the job and the most valuable.
Useful but not essential: public sector outsourcing experience, ITIL service transition knowledge, TUPE and workforce transfer exposure, and experience of insourcing or re-competition as well as outsourcing.
Cutover periods will need you on site, whatever the wider hybrid arrangement.
Clearance
Live SC clearance is required at the point of application. Clearance sponsored by a large central government department is an advantage. We cannot sponsor new clearance for this engagement.
Rate
We have not fixed a rate. Tell us what you work to and what you would bring for it, and we will have a straight conversation early rather than at offer stage. As a guide, we are benchmarking this role in the region of £600 to £700 per day depending on level.
To apply
To apply, send your CV with your clearance level, sponsoring department, expiry date, availability and day rate expectation.
Gray & Associates is an equal opportunities employer and positively encourages applications from suitably qualified and eligible candidates regardless of sex, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, religion or belief, marital status, or pregnancy and maternity.