Senior Administrator (Facilities) - School of Metallurgy and Materials - 104012 - Grade 5

Position Details

School of Metallurgy and Materials, College of Engineering and Physical Sciences

Location: University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham UK

Full time starting salary is normally in the range £28,397 to £30,210, with potential progression once in post to £33,938

Grade: 5

Part Time (20 working hours per week)

Permanent

Closing date: 10th July 2024

Open House Drop In Session: We will be holding an ‘open house’ drop in session at the University’s Exchange building, in Centenary Square, Birmingham, between 10am and 5pm on Wednesday 19th June 2024. If you’re interested in working at the University of Birmingham and perhaps have a few questions, this is an opportunity to meet colleagues in the Recruitment team. It will be a relaxed and informal event – you can drop in at any time.

Our offer to you

People are at the heart of what we are and do.

The University of Birmingham is proud to have been a part of the City of Birmingham and the wider region for over 100 years, and we are equally proud to be recognised as a leading global university. We want to attract talented people from across the city and beyond, support them to succeed, and celebrate their success.

We are committed to helping the people who work here to develop through our sector-leading Birmingham Professional programme which provides all professional services staff with development opportunities and the encouragement to reach their full potential. With almost 5,000 professional services jobs in a wide-range of functions in Edgbaston and in our campus in Dubai, there are plenty of opportunities for you to be able to develop your career at the University.

We believe there is no such thing as a typical member of staff and that diversity is a source of strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation, and debate. We warmly welcome people from all backgrounds and are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where diversity is at the heart of who and what we are, and how we work.

Supporting our people to achieve a healthy work/life balance is important both to our employees and to the success of the University and, depending on the role, we offer a variety of flexible working arrangements. We therefore welcome discussions on all forms of flexible working. In addition, you will receive a generous package of benefits including 40 days paid holiday a year, one paid day a year for volunteering, occupational sick pay, and a pension scheme. We also have three high quality subsidised day nurseries.

The University is situated in leafy Edgbaston and there are excellent transport links to our beautiful campus, including main bus routes and a train station on site. On campus we have a state-of-the-art sports centre with pool, shops, places to eat and drink, our own art gallery, museum and botanical gardens.

Find out more about the benefits of working for the University of Birmingham

Background

The School of Metallurgy and Materials is a research-intensive School which is part of the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences. It is the home of the Centre for Electron Microscopy (CEM) as well as the Characterisation facility which are part of a larger suite of facilities across the College. We are proud to encompass a wide range of research interests in the processing, characterisation, assessment and modelling of materials. We are also considered to be the leading school for many areas of metallurgical research.

As the Facilities Senior Administrator, you will support facilities in the School of Metallurgy and Materials as well as provide wider support to other facilities across the College. You will be based in the School of Metallurgy and Materials and will be part of a team of about forty professional service staff in the School.

You will primarily support the management, development and implementation of operational processes and systems in these facilities, you will monitor budgets, raising concerns where finances are not in line with the budgets and will organise and ensure all risk assessments are up to date. You will be involved in developing the content for webpages for these facilities and ensure the information is kept up to date. You will be working closely with a wide range of internal and external stakeholders as well as different teams across the University such as Finance, HR, Procurement etc as well as industrial partners and funding bodies.

Role Summary

As a senior administrator within the School of Metallurgy and Materials you will provide support for a broad range of administrative duties, some of which may be complex. You may also be responsible for managing other staff or for supporting colleagues and sharing knowledge. You will be able to use your wide range of skills, both technical and administrative, and have the opportunity to lead on specific tasks within a team. You will be supporting the Operations team with room bookings, organising events etc. In order to flexibly use resource, you may be given the opportunity to work in different areas of the department or wider University.

Senior Administrators may work in any area of the University with large groupings in HR, Finance, and School/College Hubs.

Main Duties

• You will be able to deal with complex systems and procedures and will be expected to offer advice on these, including deciding on the response to more complex queries.
• You will be expected to exercise your judgment on the answer to queries or on the direction of work within parameters set by your manager. On a day-to-day basis you will be expected to resolve more complex queries without necessarily referring to your manager.
• If you have a supervisory role, you will line manage your staff taking responsibility for co-ordinating and prioritising the work of others. If not in a supervisory role you will still be expected to act as a role model and coach members of the team.
• You will maintain high profile working relationships with key stakeholders on your own initiative, fielding enquiries and ensuring that appropriate information is disseminated to stakeholders as appropriate.
• You may be required to create content for website and ensuring the information on the website is kept up to date.
• You may be involved in organising events including booking a venue, sending invitations, arranging refreshments, liaising with speakers, manage bookings, co-ordination of colleagues, advertising, collating feedback and reporting back.
• You will manage some smaller projects on own initiative, but will also carry out desk research and source data from internal and external sources in order to contribute to wider projects.
• You will be expected to use a variety of complex University systems and processes to research, analyst and interpret complex data, producing bespoke reports as required. This may include identifying and resolving issues with the data.
• You will support the management, development and implementation of operational processes and systems.
• You may be required to process more complex data (which may be financial, HR, operational), monitor accuracy, chase up missing information, and resolve any issues as appropriate.
• You will be expected to provide specialist advice and training to colleagues on area of activity.
• As required, you will provide a professional secretarial service to relevant committees and meetings.
• You may be required to be responsible for one or more of the following:
  • monitoring budgets including processing payments, authorising expenditure, raising concerns where finances are not in line with the budget;
  • procuring goods and services through the University system;
  • updating and writing contents for the department’s communications eg intranet pages, webpages;
  • dealing with health and safety and facilities issues;
  • HR-related tasks such as managing staff absence, induction, or dealing with leavers;
  • dealing with arrangements for international visitors;
  • monitoring internal procedures/compliance and ensuring these are followed and disseminated as appropriate;
  • booking rooms and organize events.
• You are expected to support equality and values diversity, moderate own behaviour to avoid unfair discriminatory impact or bias on others.

Required Knowledge, Skills, Qualifications, Experience

• Educated to A Level standard, or equivalent level 3 qualification such as a Level 3 NVQ, or level 3 national diploma or relevant work experience evidencing the skills and ability to undertake the role.
• Minimum of grade C/4 in Mathematics and English at GCSE or equivalent.
• Experience in monitoring large budgets.
• Excellent communication skills, including the ability to write for different audiences, and to required deadlines.
• Highly proficient IT skills, in particular the ability to handle complex electronic diaries and emails, the wider MS Office suite of programmes including Excel and PowerPoint, and some experience of using an enterprise resource planning package. The post holder should also be confident and able to quickly learn new IT skills and software packages as required.
• Proven ability to plan ahead and anticipate requirements, proactively planning own (and sometimes others’ workloads) to manage time effectively, progress tasks concurrently and work to deadlines.
• Experience with creating content for websites would be advantageous.
• Excellent interpersonal skills. The post holder must inspire confidence and command authority with a range of colleagues and provide excellent customer service at all times.
• A high degree of professionalism, tact, and diplomacy, and the ability to exercise discretion regarding the handling and management of sensitive information/issues.
• A high degree of initiative, personal judgement, resourcefulness, flexibility, and a self-motivating approach.
• Ability to work effectively in a large, complex organisation, and to develop a good understanding of how the University and higher education institutions work.
• Ability to understand policy and procedures and how to apply these.
• Understands the importance of equality and diversity in the workplace.
• Ability to identify and respond to equality and diversity issues in line with relevant policies and procedures.

Dimensions

This role will require the exercise of personal initiative within and beyond the department. You will be working closely with the School’s Operations team and will support other teams when required.

Planning and Organising

The role is required to work independently on daily, weekly and monthly tasks but also on projects with medium-longer-term horizons without daily supervision. May manage other staffs’ workloads.

Problem Solving and decision making

They will work with direction from management but with a significant degree of autonomy. They will deal with more complex queries and be expected to resolve any problems in their area of responsibility. They may also manage the workload of others or coach others to achieve results.

Internal and External relationships

This role will be liaising with internal colleagues and stakeholders, likely to be University-wide and with external stakeholders.

Informal enquiries to Irina Hoffman, email: i.hoffman@bham.ac.uk

View our staff values and behaviours here

We believe there is no such thing as a typical member of University of Birmingham staff and that diversity in its many forms is a strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation and debate at the heart of University life. We are committed to proactively addressing the barriers experienced by some groups in our community and are proud to hold Athena SWAN, Race Equality Charter and Disability Confident accreditations. We have an Equality Diversity and Inclusion Centre that focuses on continuously improving the University as a fair and inclusive place to work where everyone has the opportunity to succeed. We are also committed to sustainability, which is a key part of our strategy . You can find out more about our work to create a fairer university for everyone on our website .