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.