Environment Manager

Job Purpose

The Environment Management role is responsible for ensuring the Brakes UK IT Infrastructure and IS Systems (“The environments”) are maintained in line with Best Practice and agreed policies and standards as defined in conjunction with the Enterprise Architecture team and the various third parties.

The role is primarily to govern and approve the work being delivered by the third parties but also to assist in the coordination and management of the end user / business engagement.

Key areas of responsibility are to ensure that for the breadth of the IT Infrastructure the following is considered and actively managed for each component

Availability
Resilience
Capacity
Licensing
Monitoring
Maintenance
Supportability

Dimensions

The role is an important role in the Brakes IS department and is accountable for ensuring the wide ranging elements of the IT Infrastructure and Systems is available to provide the service to all the end users and business departments. Given the reliance on IS Systems there is considerable responsibility for ensuring that the systems and supporting infrastructure is maintained in line with Best Practice and risks and issues are identified and where possible mitigated.

Whilst not a specific budget holder, the role is accountable for the prioritization, management, forecasting & tracking and delivery of Projects and small change work (RFW’s) for the IT Infrastructure and Systems. In addition there are considerable costs for the ongoing maintenance of the environment e.g. supports from third parties, licensing etc and this role will be responsible for the efficient management of these costs. Given the breadth of these activities across the spectrum of our IT Architecture these costs are of significant budgetary value.

Whilst the role has no direct line management responsibility, the role is required to manage third parties and govern the delivery of their services which will be a large part of the day to day responsibility.

Role context

The availability of IT Infrastructure and Systems are the heart of the IS Service and therefore this role is pivotal to the success of the IS department in it’s delivery of the IS Service to the Brakes business.

The breadth of the IT infrastructure and Systems is considerable and complex and the scope not only includes the production systems and services but also all the non-Production environment on which major projects are delivered. Therefore the success in delivering this role has potential to impact both the quality of the service delivered but also underpins some of the key business projects.

A key part of the role will be to contribute to the strategies, roadmaps and policies as defined by the architecture team and once agreed work with the project managers and third parties to implement them where appropriate.

Once implemented the primary responsibility of this role will be to work with our partners to ensure that the Infrastructure and systems are properly maintained in line with Best Practice and that the agreed policies and processes are adhered to.

The context of the role is to act in an internal governance role for ensuring we are maintaining our environments to good standards but also to act in a consultative capacity, between the third parties, the rest of the IS department around IT Infrastructure and Systems.

The role will be expected to ensure that issues and risks related to the environments are identified and properly managed through the appropriate processes.

As part of a driver to improve the services provided the role will be expected to identify opportunities for service improvement and innovation for the provision and maintenance of the environments. 

The role will need to manage multiple, often conflicting priorities in order to maximise the delivery to the various teams within the IS department to meet the competing needs for various elements of the IS Service and project timelines.

Accountability

Accountable for ensuring that IT infrastructure is maintained to agreed standards and policies and that maintenance processes are adhere to.

Responsible for reviewing capacity of the various elements of the IT Infrastructure and System and working with partners to maintain the capacity in line with agreed standards

Identify Risks and Issue with the various elements of the IT Infrastructure and System and working with partners to develop plans to mitigate agreed risks

Responsible for ensuring that the environments and systems are licenced in accordance with manufactured and software providers licencing policies

Develop and maintain a continuous improvement plan with the third party providers to ensure that infrastructure systems and processes are improvement, looking at various aspects e.g. areas to reduce points of failure or capacity issues

Ensures that the CMDB containing the infrastructure and systems is accurately maintained by the third parties

Refreshing of SAP Test environments in line with agreed refresh policies

.
Knowledge, skills, experience and competencies

Experience of working with multiple suppliers, the ongoing management of third parties as well as a commercial awareness and some exposure of contracts and their use.

Excellent communicator with the ability to communicate with both technical and non-technical staff at all levels within the business, including executive and senior management.

Excellent written and verbal communication skills

Clear decision making is essential based on reviewing and assessing often complex and technical proposals in order to drive forward requirements and requests both internally and from third parties

Good knowledge of Microsoft products with the ability to produce written output of good quality with minimal support

Experience of requirements capture and definition, with the ability to drive through to solution definition

Strong Stakeholder management experience, with the ability to balance complex and often conflicting priorities in a positive manner

Knowledge of IS delivery methods and practices and understanding of how outsourcing should operate to support these.

A strong service awareness with a good understanding of IT Service Delivery Management ITIL

Experience of transformational or project change programmes

Wide understanding of IT Infrastructure components that make up the IT Infrastructure Environment, including hosted Data Centre environments, networks and telephony

A good knowledge of systems across multiple platforms and technologies including integration environments. A deep understanding of SAP would be a significant benefit

Ability to cope with complex, sometimes conflicting, service and project requirements and issues

Ability to promote and drive initiatives that are not seen as driving significant business benefit but underpin the IS Service provision.