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.