Head of Operations, Engineering and Maintenance

Head of Operations, Engineering and Maintenance Reporting to: Head of Transformation Location: Flexible/remote working, with regular travel to operational sites and Wilton ABOUT SEMBCORP Sembcorp Industries (Sembcorp) is a leading energy and urban solutions provider, led by its purpose to drive energy transition. Headquartered in Singapore, Sembcorp delivers sustainable solutions to support energy transition and urban development by leveraging its sector expertise and global track record. Sembcorp Energy UK (SEUK), a wholly owned subsidiary of Sembcorp Industries, is a leading provider of sustainable solutions supporting the UK's transition to Net Zero. With an energy generation and battery storage portfolio of over 1.3 GW in operation or under development, our expertise helps major energy users and suppliers improve their efficiency, profitability, and sustainability, while supporting the growth of renewables and strengthening the UK's electricity system. Our Wilton International site, within the Teesside Freeport, sits amongst a hub of decarbonisation innovation. At the site, we provide energy-intensive industrial businesses with combined heat and power (CHP) via our private wire network that supplies electricity generated by gas and biomass. These services are complemented by our fleet of fast-acting, decentralised power stations and battery energy storage sites situated throughout England and Wales. Monitored and controlled from our central operations facility in Solihull, these flexible assets deliver electricity to the national grid, helping to balance the UK energy system and ensure reliable power for homes and businesses. PURPOSE AND SCOPE Lead the safe, reliable and efficient operation, engineering and maintenance of Sembcorp Energy UK's flexible generation and battery storage fleet. The role is accountable for maximising mechanical and electrical availability, improving asset reliability, implementing regulatory requirements, developing organisational capability and delivering sustainable performance within a disciplined operations and maintenance (O&M) budget. The role has authority to recommend and implement organisational, maintenance and operational changes within approved budgets and company governance requirements. Provide visible leadership and demonstrate personal commitment to health and safety, ensuring risks are effectively managed and a strong safety culture is maintained across the fleet. KEY ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES - Lead the safe, reliable and efficient operation, engineering and maintenance of the flexible generation and battery storage fleet, with direct accountability for mechanical and electrical availability, operational readiness and delivery of market-led performance requirements. - Develop and deliver, with Energy Trading and other stakeholders, seasonal fleet-readiness plans that align winter availability, summer maintenance windows, outage priorities, asset constraints and recovery actions with changing market-led operational requirements. - Own technical integrity across the fleet, including engineering standards, technical governance, management of change, risk-based deviation decisions and the operations, engineering and maintenance risk register. Restrict asset operation or defer a commercial commitment where safety, compliance or equipment integrity is at risk, escalating promptly through the appropriate governance route. - Define and implement the fleet maintenance strategy and delivery model, determining the appropriate balance of internal capability, original equipment manufacturer (OEM) support, long-term service agreement (LTSA) provision and specialist contractors within the approved organisation and annual budget. - Drive asset reliability and maintenance effectiveness through proactive planning, condition-based monitoring, critical spares strategy, root cause failure analysis, defect elimination and optimisation of preventative and predictive maintenance programmes. - Hold direct performance accountability for the operations, engineering and maintenance organisation, including Area Supervisors and engineering functional leaders. Assess organisational capability, set clear expectations, develop succession and workforce plans, and reshape responsibilities and team structures within the approved organisation to ensure the skills, capacity and leadership required for sustained performance. - Own delivery of the approved annual O&M budget, with authority to prioritise and reallocate expenditure within it to balance availability, risk, cost and commercial performance. Develop proposals for additional expenditure where required and seek business approval with the support of the Head of Transformation. - Hold OEMs, LTSA providers and strategic maintenance partners to account for safety, technical quality, cost, responsiveness and contractual performance. Maintain accountability for battery fleet availability while specialist maintenance execution remains with LTSA providers, and recommend changes to suppliers or contractual arrangements where performance is inadequate. - Be accountable for implementing health, safety, environmental, regulatory, permit and operational requirements across the fleet, maintaining effective controls and corrective actions while formal assurance and independent oversight remain with the HSSE and Compliance functions. - Act as the senior accountable operational lead for major fleet incidents, directing the operational response, recovery and business continuity arrangements and ensuring lessons learned and corrective actions are implemented. Work with HSSE on formal incident assurance and with Energy Trading on market-facing consequences. - Use operational data, asset-health information and performance indicators to identify risk, prioritise interventions and drive corrective action. Working with the Digital and Technology team, lead adoption of digital tools, predictive maintenance technologies, data analytics and operational reporting systems to improve decision-making, asset performance and maintenance effectiveness. - Identify medium- and long-term fleet risks and develop proportionate lifecycle, capacity and resource proposals covering asset condition, critical spares, contractor capacity, specialist skills and outage resources. Present recommendations, including cost, availability, risk and commercial implications, for business consideration and approval. QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE Essential: - Substantial technical and operational experience in gas-fired power generation or a comparable asset-intensive environment. A relevant engineering or technical degree would be advantageous but is not essential. - Substantial leadership experience in operations, engineering or maintenance, gained as an established senior leader or as a strong deputy-level candidate able to demonstrate readiness for full functional accountability. - Strong technical leadership capability, with predominant mechanical and electrical expertise in gas-fired generation and the judgement to draw effectively on specialist expertise where required. - Demonstrated experience leading multi-site or geographically distributed operations, engineering and maintenance teams, with direct accountability for performance management, organisational capability and workforce development. - Proven accountability for delivering an approved operations and maintenance (O&M) budget, including prioritising and reallocating expenditure to balance fleet availability, operational risk and cost across ageing or distributed infrastructure assets. - Proven accountability for technical integrity, engineering standards, management of change, operational risk and risk-based technical decisions, supported by strong knowledge of maintenance strategy, reliability engineering, condition monitoring and outage planning. - Experience translating changing commercial or market requirements into seasonal availability, outage, maintenance and operational-readiness plans, using operational data and KPIs to drive delivery and corrective action. - Experience leading the operational response to significant plant incidents, including recovery, business continuity and implementation of lessons learned, with sound knowledge of relevant UK health, safety, environmental and regulatory requirements. - Strong commercial, leadership and stakeholder-management skills, including experience holding OEMs, LTSA providers and strategic maintenance partners to account for safety, technical quality, cost, responsiveness and performance, and influencing effectively across HSSE, compliance, commercial and Energy Trading functions. Desirable: - Experience of battery energy storage systems, including accountability for asset availability and oversight of LTSA provider performance. - Experience of the UK energy market and the ability to advise on the interaction between trading requirements, operating strategy, maintenance cost, reliability risk and asset degradation. - Familiarity with SCADA, CMMS/EAM platforms, predictive maintenance technologies, reporting tools and digital asset-management systems. - Professional registration or relevant certification in engineering, maintenance, health and safety or asset management. BENEFITS - Competitive basic salary dependent on experience - Discretionary performance-based bonus - 26 days annual leave plus bank holidays - Stakeholder Pension Scheme - Private Health Insurance - Group Income Protection Scheme - Life Assurance - Flexible working - Training and Development - Car Allowance For more information or for a confidential chat please contact Anthony Antoniou at Imperial Recruitment Group