Global Head of PMO

With a multinational global team, Davies Group is a specialist professional services and technology firm working in partnership with leading insurance, highly regulated, and global businesses. At Davies Group, we help clients to manage risk, run core business processes, and to transform and grow. We deliver operations, consulting and technology solutions across the risk and insurance value chain, including excellence in claims, underwriting, distribution, regulation, customer experience, human capital, transformation, and change management.

Our Group Transformation Office (TO) oversees the following:

1. Group Program’s - strategic contribution and execution of large corporate-wide, cross-functional transformation initiatives.
2. Change Management - we resource and help manage wider change in the Group, supplying personnel and tools as needed. Our operations in the UK are set up and we are looking to expand our US operations aligned with recent inorganic growth across the region.
3. M&A Integration- we engage during due diligence and post-acquisition our Integration Management Office (IMO) handles integrating new companies into Davies.

The Global Head of PMO (Portfolio Management Office) is a senior leadership role responsible for overseeing and driving the project management function across the organization on a global scale. Reporting directly to the Chief Transformation Officer, the successful candidate will be  primarily responsible for providing strategic challenge, overview and scrutiny across multiple Portfolios as referenced above.

As a senior member of the Transformation team, the ability to influence, constructively challenge and consult with all levels of the business is critical.

Key responsibilities 

• Responsible for developing and leading the Global Portfolio Management Office, including the development of a Global PMO strategy aligning to overall goals of delivering value and enhancing the maturity of the function from its current state.
• Strategic Planning: Develop and implement a global project management strategy aligned with organisational goals and objectives.
• Governance and Compliance: Establish project management governance frameworks, policies, and standards to ensure compliance and consistency across all projects and portfolios. This includes ownership of our ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) tooling and associated tools, techniques, and processes.
• Resource Management: Oversee resource allocation, capacity planning, and talent development within the PMO to support project delivery excellence.
• Performance Management: Define key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to measure and evaluate project performance, identifying areas for improvement and implementing corrective actions as needed.
• Risk and Issue Management: Anticipate and mitigate project risks and issues proactively, ensuring mechanisms are in place for timely escalation and resolution to minimize impact on project timelines and deliverables. This includes providing risk-based audit outputs such as health checks, as agreed with the leadership team.
• Change Management: Drive change management initiatives to facilitate organisational adoption of new processes, tools, and methodologies related to project management.
• Reporting and Communication: Embed mechanism for the preparation of regular project updates, reports, and insights to executive leadership and other stakeholders on project status, milestones, and outcomes. This also includes working closely with project teams and Group/Divisional finance functions on deploying mechanisms for great financial management, reporting and monitoring.
• Stakeholder Engagement: Collaborate with key stakeholders, including executive leadership, business units, and external partners, to understand project requirements, gain buy-in, and ensure alignment with strategic priorities.
• Leadership and Team Management: Provide leadership, guidance, and mentorship to the PMO team, fostering a culture of accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement. This also includes ongoing recruitment, training and development of the overall PMO team to retain and build expertise; ensuring the wider PMO team members have the processes and knowledge to support general day to day queries from across the business.
• Continuous Improvement: Champion a culture of continuous improvement within the PMO, fostering innovation, learning, and best practice sharing to enhance project delivery effectiveness and efficiency.

Key skills and experience required

• 10 years plus experience in major change projects, programme management, and strategic planning.
• Confident and proven PMO leadership skills, ideally in a scaling/large business.
• Demonstrable commercial awareness and financial acumen
• Clear thinking, with the ability to easily dissect complex information
• Strong people-management skills, an ability to get the best out of colleagues and support as/when needed.
• Influenceable communicator, confident in managing up and challenging executive level leaders  
• Prince2, APMG Change Management or Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) certification highly advantageous
• Completion or currently undertaking MoP and/or P30 certification(s) desirable
  Noteworthy: Occasional travel required to offices across the UK, US and India.

What we offer

• Company Pension and Life Assurance
• Leadership, training & support for professional qualifications
• Development programmes & institute memberships
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Virtual GP and other wellbeing resources and regular company initiatives
• Access to Cycle to Work, Season Ticket Loan and eye test vouchers
• Davies Foundation; regular fun events to raise funds for our charitable foundation

Diversity & Inclusion

Davies are committed to being a diverse and inclusive workplace, we welcome candidates of all genders, gender identity and expression, neurodiversity, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, nationality and belief (or lack thereof).