Secretariat

At Mace, our purpose is to redefine the boundaries of ambition. We believe in creating places that are responsible, bringing transformative impact to our people, communities and societies across the globe.

To learn more about our purpose, culture, and priorities, visit our .

Within our Consult business we harness our unique combination of leading-edge practical expertise and project delivery consultancy to unlock the potential in every project.

The project :

The secretariat team is uniquely placed to add value to project delivery, contributing significantly to the speed of decision making, risk mitigation and successful delivery.

Our values shape the way we consult, and define the people we want to join us on our journey, they are :

• Safety first - Going home safe and well
• Client focus - Deliver on our promise
• Integrity - Always do the right thing
• Create opportunity - for our people to excel.

You’ll be responsible for :

• Providing expert secretariat support for the program’s key governance meetings including 3 levels of control, ensuring that the governance regime and decision-making occurs within authority and, as appropriate, decisions are escalated in line delegated authority thresholds, as set out in the governance and assurance management plan, associated terms of reference and delegation of authority.
• Working closely with directors and senior colleagues across the program to ensure key project and program governance meetings are operating effectively and efficiently.
• Owning and ensuring compliance with processes contribute to the quality of the information going to governance meetings.
• Supporting the chairs to run effective running meetings, including compliance and stage gate support, planning and coordination.
• Owning and implementing the integrated assurance and approval plan for projects including scheduling stage gate meetings, sourcing and constructing the packs, briefing people on requirements and expectations, working with Sponsor’s office and VPs / EVP to ensure expectations are met, coordinating to ensure continued alignment with client processes (and supporting updates to existing processes / sharing new tools / templates as necessary), developing draft briefing memos as required and other ad hoc activities to ensure the smooth flow of projects through stage gate process (includes both assurance process and supporting client through formal stage gate process as applicable).

Forecast requirements

Planning future requirements and briefings, forecasting requirements for future inputs, meetings, reviews and other supporting assurance activities in collaboration with the wider project team, and will own implementation the 3 lines of control, assurance and reporting requirements (i.

e. inputs and workback plans for festival, treasury board, investment panel, etc.).

Training and development

Developing and owning the Governance 101 module for project onboarding and training.

Owning and ensuring adherence to the integrated RACI

• Implementing both the governance and assurance RACI on behalf of the project, ensuring the Integrated RACIs are implemented across their management areas.
• Developing briefing on the integrated RACIs as part of the Governance 101 training including why governance is fundamental to project success, meetings / terms of reference, processes, best for project decision-making and escalation, single source of the truth, assurance, role of the partners, key dates, etc.

Overarching assurance

Owning the reporting and assurance calendar and workback plan, including briefing input owners on requirements and cadence to ensure meetings and assurance forums have access to high-quality trusted information to support robust decision-making.

Meeting governance, management and facilitation

Supporting includes, in change control forums, ExCos, leadership meetings, operational boards, decision boards. Inputs and outputs for other meetings as required (may include preparation of materials for change forums when required for projects; CEO meetings, etc).

Meeting preparation

• Creating meeting cycles in accordance with forum requirements.
• Coordinating senior colleague’s diaries, travel arrangements, meeting room bookings or event spaces for awaydays, conferences and more.
• Managing commission agenda items and ensure papers are submitted by strict deadlines
• Creating, coordinating and signing off agendas with chairs.
• Being in charge of quality assurance of meeting packs : including as content presentation (checking format, typos); content sense checking (is the paper suitable for the intended audience, is it sponsored by appropriate people, does it conflict with any other papers coming to this or another forum).
• Managing the meeting governance, meeting calendar and control of creation of new meetings working closely with the contractor and client leads.
• Forwarding agenda planning, preparing and writing papers, creation and management of action and decision trackers.

Meeting facilitation

Expertly recording high-level commercially sensitive minutes of meetings and actions and subsequently issuing and chasing of meeting actions, ensuring clear ownership and due dates, making use of appropriate collaborative online tools.

Post-meeting management

• Performing quality reviews on minutes taken, progress minutes through appropriate approval process dependent on forum, issue minutes within the appropriate timescales, log and store minutes and associated meeting packs in appropriate locations.
• Following up and report on actions and decisions.
• Ensuring that forum terms of references are kept up to date on a regular basis, ownership of the terms of reference templates, content and process.
• Liaising and working across the project / program and its many forums to drive consistency in meeting operations.
• Ensuring papers and decisions are routed to next level governance for escalation and / or decision-making, whether within projects own governance or broader governance.
• Communicating important time sensitive messages to all levels of management from support staff to partner leads, program directors, VPs, EVPs as appropriate including support on briefing execs ahead of key meetings.
• Advising and supporting the chairs as appropriate d in carrying out their functions and meeting their objectives, including preparing briefings and arranging briefing meetings.
• Developing and maintaining excellent relationships with internal stakeholders on governance and secretariat issues to improve information exchange.
• Participating in information and best practices sharing forums for governance with other major projects.
• Promoting adherence to and making changes to governance processes, through working with internal comms and other project functions.
• Participating in and / or managing corporate projects as and when required to support business objectives.

Support to Governance Manager

• Supporting the governance manager in deploying the program governance and delegation procedures to ensure compliance with the approved delegation of authority for the projects.
• Supporting the governance manager in updating the governance framework as required and briefing out changes to relevant teams’ members.
• Supporting the governance manger to complete ad hoc tasks to strict deadlines.
• Supporting additional meetings / forums within the client as required
• Supporting the sponsors’ office with the governance manager on ad hoc governance items which may include folio submissions, stage gate updates, inputs / outputs for municipal sponsors office, etc.
• Supporting the governance manager to facilitate the checkpoints and a robust stage gate approvals process that meets the all-partner conditions of satisfaction.

You’ll need to have :

• Experience in liaising with legal representatives for formal execution and exchange, ensure registers and file repositories updated, documentation and transfer signings matched documentation held supporting contractor governance, change manager, commercial director.
• Progressing contracts from conception through to completion, ensuring all levels of required approvals are in place.
• Experience in a fast-paced project delivery environment.
• Ability to prioritize and work as part of a team, lead by example and demonstrate the key importance of governance to successful major infrastructure projects.
• Collaborative approach and initiative.
• Ability to work with C-Suite and other stakeholders with diplomacy and care.
• Strong understanding of requirements for successful meeting governance and management including appropriate meeting minutes.
• Ability to prepare briefing notes with support and oversight from others.
• Proficient with Microsoft Office Suite including formatting and use of styles.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Excellent interpersonal and customer service skills.
• Excellent organizational skills and attention to detail.
• Experience in a secretariat role previously including preparing papers for C-Suite forums and meetings in confidential or commercially sensitive settings.
• Experience in working in Canadian or similar transport government setting.
• Familiar with requirements of public sector business case reporting and requirements.

Mace is an inclusive employer and welcomes interest from a diverse range of candidates. Even if you feel you do not fulfil all of the criteria, please apply as you may still be the best candidate for this role or another role within our organization.

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