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Head of Quality Assurance Defence Academy
- Shrivenham, Swindon Full time 37 hours per week
- Hybrid working Salary: £40,000-£45,000 per annum dependent upon experience Serco are recruiting for a new and exciting role of Head of Quality Assurance to join the team at The Defence Academy based at Shrivenham. Serco are contracted to provide an extensive range of multi-disciplinary outsourced services to support the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom as it seeks to develop the 'intellectual edge' needed to run successful government departments and military operations. With a long and prestigious history, the estates and colleges of the Defence Academy have evolved, adapting to meet the changing needs or our nations armed forces through training and education that deliver real world capability advantage.
Working as a stand-alone and impartial role, the Head of Quality Assurance will be responsible for managing an audit and quality programme across all operations at the DA in line with our contracted KPI deliverables. This responsibility will encompass the follow up and resolution of audit corrective actions and ensure that quality is embedded in the Defence Academy culture, policies, and processes.
We offer this role with hybrid working the requirement is to be based in the office 3 days per week.
Main accountabilities:
- Adhere to all company protocols, procedures, and the Serco Management System policies.
- Be the Defence Academy POC for internal and external audits including, but not limited to BSi.
- Prepare, develop, and lead annual and ad hoc audit programmes.
- Ensure all confidential information remains within the company and is not relayed in either verbal or written form to persons or organisations outside the company.
- Develop and maintain a site wide audit plan across all departments in line with contractual KPI’s.
- Work with the Contract Managers to build quality assurance into the day-to-day operations and service delivery with appropriate general spot checks, and approval and sign-off steps as required.
- Soft and hard copy record keeping, accurate document storage processes, KPI and performance reporting, share-point records.
- Support the Contract Managers with monthly contract performance reporting to ensure accuracy of department information.
- Ownership of ‘All Serco’ documents on SIDA (Serco Defence Academy intranet) to check review dates and allocate sequence numbers. Also spot check certain folders within SIDA (contract & compliance, strategy etc) to ensure files are up to date and auditable.
- Record, prioritise and report audit action undertaken, audit findings and associated corrective actions, tracking, assigning, and managing these until successful resolution.
- Audit on-site people processes (spot check interviews, objective setting, vetting, and correct processes being followed)
- Subject all areas of responsibility to continuous review with the objective of identifying and implementing efficiency improvements.
- Undertake any in-depth Quality Assurance Audits tasked by the Contract Managers, say in response to specific incident from a failure in service delivery.
- Use the Assure system to input and track audit actions as required.
- Work productively with other Serco personnel, ensuring that their productivity and attitude is not adversely affected by your actions and/or behaviour.
- Work with, and support, department heads to ensure compliance with their KPI methodologies, and management policies necessary for contract delivery.
- Attend monthly ‘All SMT’ meetings and provide relevant updates.
- What you’ll need to do the role:
- Clear decision making in a timely manner based on facts and sound rationale.
- High level of interpersonal and people skills and attributes.
- Engaging communication skills.
- Highly evolved time management skills in order to meet demanding programmes of work.
- Highly literate and experienced with IT, in particular MS Office, including Email, Outlook, Word and Excel.
- Proven ability to effectively communicate at all levels of management and teams.
- Security clearance to the appropriate level.
- Self-motivated with excellent planning and organisational ability.
- Continuous improvement and growth mindset, driven to identify opportunities for improvements.
- Ability to quickly understand processes via a logical approach, and able to identify any areas of weakness, and/or sharing best practice across departments.
- Attention to detail and analytical thinking, able to observe situations and make recommendations for improvements.
- Able to achieve SC clearance.
Must have experience in:
- Previous experience in a similar role.
- Auditing and reporting (documents, processes, and ways of working) such as BSi methods.
- Delivering on contractual KPI’s.
- Interacting with clients and stakeholders at a senior level.
- Quality assurance.
- Document management.
- Microsoft SharePoint document libraries, document management and version control
- Project Management.
Qualifications required:
- Qualified member of the Chartered Institute of Internal Auditors to at least CIA/Practitioner level; or
- Fully qualified member of the Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT) or hold an equivalent professional qualification: or
- Internal Audit Professional Apprenticeship; or
- If candidate has completed the Internal Audit Practitioner Apprenticeship L4, they should be working towards the Internal Audit Professional Apprenticeship L7 (Serco can support with further development through their Apprenticeship programme and there would be an expectation to achieve the level 7 certification): or proven significant experience working in similar roles with transferable skills.
What we offer:
The Defence Academy sits within a beautiful and secure site which hosts 2 lakes and is surrounded by acres of scenic woodland. The Academy trains the future commanders and staff officers of all three UK Armed Services and those from many countries around the world. Other benefits of working on this site include:
- Free, secure onsite parking.
- Opportunity to join many sports and activity clubs (heavily subsidised subscription costs).
- Fully equipped riding stables, with the opportunity for lessons.
- Other sporting facilities include tennis courts, Astro-turf football pitches and much more.
- 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays
- Serco-Flex – local working policy which supports home working options dependant on role requirements.
- Serco discounts which include cinema, entertainment and online shopping discounts, discounts on mobile phone plans and leisure centre memberships.
- We are constantly challenging ourselves and each other to deliver brilliantly, and you will too, working in a company passionate about diversity and inclusion.
- A wealth of career development training to suit your future aspirations. These range from role specific training, leadership coaching, formal study and much more to support you to build your career with Serco.
Proud member of the Disability Confident employer scheme
Disability Confident
About Disability Confident
A Disability Confident employer will generally offer an interview to any applicant that declares they have a disability and meets the minimum criteria for the job as defined by the employer. It is important to note that in certain recruitment situations such as high-volume, seasonal and high-peak times, the employer may wish to limit the overall numbers of interviews offered to both disabled people and non-disabled people. For more details please go to
Disability Confident.
