Continual Improvement and Innovation Manager

Continual Improvement and Innovation Manager

Redhill, Surrey | Hybrid Working | 16-Month Fixed Term Contract

The Opportunity

A leading global technology and engineering organisation is seeking an experienced-Continual Improvement and Innovation Manager-to join a major long-term transport technology programme.

The programme involves the operation, maintenance and ongoing development of a large-scale, business-critical technology environment supporting millions of passenger journeys. It encompasses customer-facing equipment, payment and ticketing technology, back-office platforms, IT infrastructure, operational systems and associated support services.

This is a key role responsible for establishing and leading the continual improvement and innovation function across the programme, identifying opportunities to improve-service quality, operational efficiency, system resilience, maintainability, customer outcomes and value for money.

The successful candidate will work across operational, service management, engineering and technical teams, using the-ITIL Continual Improvement Model-to identify, prioritise and deliver measurable improvements.

Key Responsibilities

• Establish, manage and continuously develop the programme''s-Continual Improvement and Innovation framework, aligned with ITIL principles and contractual requirements.
• Lead continual improvement processes across service delivery, operations, engineering and technology environments.
• Conduct and coordinate assessments of service delivery, operational processes, systems, asset management and incident management to identify improvement opportunities.
• Analyse-operational data, service performance, incidents, trends and stakeholder feedback-to identify opportunities to improve reliability, efficiency and customer outcomes.
• Develop structured improvement roadmaps aligned with contractual objectives, service strategy and wider business priorities.
• Facilitate-workshops, root cause analysis and improvement sessions-with operational and technical stakeholders.
• Develop business cases and improvement proposals, clearly defining objectives, costs, risks, dependencies, benefits and success measures.
• Present recommendations, improvement proposals and progress updates at senior management and customer governance meetings.
• Work closely with customer representatives, service managers, technical authorities, engineering teams and operational stakeholders.
• Oversee the delivery of improvement and innovation initiatives, ensuring projects are delivered effectively and remain aligned with business and contractual objectives.
• Track and measure realised benefits against agreed objectives and implement corrective actions where required.
• Lead post-implementation reviews and produce-reports, dashboards and executive summaries-covering improvement performance and realised benefits.
• Identify opportunities to introduce-automation, digital transformation and innovative technologies-across service and operational environments.
• Promote a culture of continual improvement by sharing best practice, lessons learned and successful initiatives across the programme.
• Ensure continual improvement objectives, processes and initiatives are understood across operational and technical teams.

Experience & Skills

The successful candidate will ideally have:

• Strong experience within-continual improvement, service improvement, operational excellence or innovation management.
• Experience working within-contractual service delivery environments-and formal governance structures.
• Strong understanding of-ITIL Continual Improvement practices and service management principles.
• Experience working across-service management, operational support, engineering and architecture teams.
• Experience facilitating workshops, root cause analysis and stakeholder engagement activities.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capability.
• Experience analysing-service performance metrics, operational data and service reporting.
• Excellent stakeholder management and influencing skills, including working with senior executives and technical teams.
• Strong business case development and financial analysis skills.
• Experience overseeing improvement projects and measuring realised benefits.
• Understanding of-automation, digital transformation and innovation approaches.
• Strong reporting, presentation and documentation skills.
• Experience using-Power BI or equivalent reporting/data analysis platforms.

Qualifications

Ideally candidates will hold one or more of the following:-ITIL 4 Managing Professional-or relevant ITIL 4 Specialist qualification;-Lean Six Sigma Green Belt-or above;-PRINCE2 Practitioner, Agile Practitioner-or equivalent project/delivery qualification; degree-level qualification or equivalent experience within Business, Technology, Engineering or a related discipline.