Change your career, change lives
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About the Role
As a Project Manager, you will be responsible for leading the Enrolment and Student Support Delivery workstream within the University's Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) Programme, a major strategic transformation and compliance programme delivering the operational, systems, policy and service changes required to support the new student finance model in England.
The Enrolment and Student Support workstream has successfully delivered the Registration Open milestone and established the core capability required to identify, inform and support LLE students. The focus of the role is now on delivering the remaining programme milestones, including SLC Systems Launch (September 2026), Full LLE Launch (January 2027) and the transition to business-as-usual operations.
Working across Academic Services, Digital Services, Student Support, Finance, Marketing and Communications and external stakeholders, you will lead delivery of the remaining LLE programme milestones, ensuring operational readiness and successful implementation of enrolment, student support and student finance-related changes.
You will manage delivery across a complex landscape of business, policy and technical dependencies, ensuring that operational processes, student-facing services and supporting systems are aligned and ready to support both LLE-funded and legacy students during a period of dual-running and significant organisational change.
Key Responsibilities
As a Project Manager, you will:
- Lead projects, workstreams or activities through delivery, implementation and transition phases, ensuring achievement of key deliverables within agreed time, cost and scope thresholds.
- Work with key stakeholders to clarify the business benefits and products that are to be delivered together with the quality, time and cost criteria that are to be met.
- Identify and facilitate the evaluation of different delivery options to enable key stakeholders to select an appropriate approach.
- Develop and agree a work plan that identifies key activities, outputs and resource requirements and that provides a basis for monitoring performance.
- Identify and evaluate risks associated with the project, escalating where appropriate. Where necessary, develop, agree and implement solutions to overcome these.
- Adhere to OU project and financial governance and reporting processes to ensure that decisions are made by the right people at the right time and that you and the project’s key stakeholders can monitor, control and evaluate the performance of the activity.
- Obtain stakeholder sign off for the completed products and deliver documentation that enables implementation, operation and ongoing support.
- Conduct assurance reviews within the project to give senior stakeholders confidence that the project can deliver to time, budget and quality.
- Capture lessons learned and share these with stakeholders and the project and change management community to enable performance improvement.
- Lead delivery of the Enrolment and Student Support workstream within the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) Programme, ensuring successful delivery of the remaining programme milestones and associated operational outcomes.
- Manage delivery of operational changes required to support LLE-funded students, including registration, enrolment, eligibility assessment, student communications, student support processes and student lifecycle management.
- Coordinate business readiness activities across Academic Services and partner teams to ensure services, processes, guidance, training and operational controls are in place ahead of SLC Systems Launch and Full LLE Launch.
- Work with business and technical stakeholders to deliver changes to registration processes, eligibility services, student information journeys, notifications, communications and operational reporting.
- Manage cross-functional dependencies across Academic Services, Digital Services, Finance, Student Support, Marketing and Communications and external partners, ensuring delivery risks and issues are actively managed and resolved.
- Support implementation of Student Loans Company (SLC) operational processes including registration confirmation, attendance validation, change of circumstance handling, reporting and student finance-related activities.
- Lead planning and transition activities to ensure the successful handover of programme deliverables into sustainable business-as-usual operations.
- Ensure delivery supports regulatory, policy and operational requirements associated with the Lifelong Learning Entitlement and the University's dual-running funding model.
About You
Essential:
- Higher education qualification or equivalent professional experience.
- Experience of successfully managing the delivery of complex projects, workstreams or business change initiatives within agreed time, cost and quality parameters.
- Awareness and understanding of best practice project management methodologies, governance and assurance processes.
- Strong IT skills and the ability to use a range of software packages to support project delivery, reporting and stakeholder engagement.
- Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to communicate confidently and effectively with a variety of audiences, negotiate outcomes and manage challenging situations.
- Strong problem-solving skills, with the ability to identify issues, assess risks, exercise sound judgement and implement appropriate solutions.
- Excellent planning and organisational skills, with the ability to prioritise competing demands, manage dependencies and deliver to multiple deadlines.
- Proven ability to build productive working relationships and collaborate effectively across organisational boundaries to achieve shared objectives.
- Resilient and adaptable, maintaining effectiveness under pressure and responding positively to changing priorities, requirements and ways of working.
- Experience of delivering process, policy, system or service improvements within a complex organisational environment.
- Continuous improvement: identifies opportunities for continuous improvement; shows commitment to own professional development; demonstrates enthusiasm, willingness and ability to learn new skills. Creates momentum and excitement around initiatives and new approaches.
- Ability to carry out the role in a way that is consistent with equality legislation and University policies.
Desirable:
- A recognised professional qualification relevant to project management.
- Experience of project management.
- Experience of working in a fast-paced environment and within tight deadlines.
Support with your application
If you have any questions, or need support or adjustments relating to your application, the recruitment process, or the role, please contact us on 01908 541111 or email careers@open.ac.uk quoting the advert reference number.
What's in it for you?
At The Open University, we offer a range of benefits to recognise and reward great work, alongside policies and flexible working that contribute towards a great work life balance. Get all the details of what benefits we offer by visiting our Staff Benefits page (clicking this link will open a new window).
Flexible working
We are open to discussions about flexible working. Whether it’s a job share, part time, compressed hours or another working arrangement. Please reach out to us to discuss what works best for you.
Work location
It is anticipated that a hybrid working pattern can be adopted for this role, where you can work from home and the office. However, as this role is contractually aligned to our Milton Keynes office, it is expected that some attendance in the office will be required when necessary and in response to business needs. We’d expect this to be twice per week, worked across Tuesday-Thursday.
Next steps in the Recruitment process
It is anticipated interviews will take place mid-July. Candidate will be invited to attend a panel interview and participate in a presentation exercise.
Early closing date notification
While most roles will remain open until the advertised closing date, applications may be reviewed on an ongoing basis. In some cases, vacancies may close earlier if a sufficient number of suitable applications have been received and equality impacts have been appropriately considered. All roles will remain advertised for a minimum of one week before any early closure is implemented.
If you have started an application or were in the process of applying when the advert closed, we encourage you to get in touch. We are committed to understanding individual circumstances and can offer further support where needed, including reasonable adjustments for applicants with protected characteristics.
How to apply
To apply for this role, please submit the following as separate documents;
- CV
- Supporting statement, up to 1,500 words, you should set out in your statement why you’re interested in this role and provide examples of where your skills and experience meet the required competencies for this role as detailed in the job and person specification.
You can view your progress and application communications when you are logged into our recruitment system. Please check your spam/junk folders if you do not receive associated email updates.
