Drinking Water Compliance Technical Lead

We are Uisce Éireann. Every day, we are responsible for the delivery of secure, safe, and sustainable water services for the people of Ireland. As Ireland's national regulated water utility, our vision is a sustainable Ireland where water is respected and protected, for the planet and all the lives it supports.

Our purpose at Uisce Éireann is to rise to the challenge of delivering transformative water services that enable communities to thrive. That means we are proud to take on the responsibility of protecting our water supply and passing on a safe and secure water system to a rapidly growing population and empowering Ireland's social and economic growth.

We are passionate about empowering our people, enabling them to make a positive impact on communities across Ireland. We are guided by a shared vision and purpose, grounded in values that define who we are and shape how we work, where we deliver for customers and communities, we work better together, we do the right thing, we aim high, and we keep each other safe. Our behaviours define how we interact, communicate, and succeed together. These values and behaviours apply to each one of us, across every role, location, and level.

Our goal is to attract and develop skilled and talented people from diverse backgrounds, who bring a dynamic range of expertise and insights to our work. With a strong, values driven workforce, we ensure Uisce Éireann can continue advancing Ireland's water services and meeting the needs of the communities we serve for generations to come.

The Role The Environmental Regulation function is responsible for the day to day management of environmental regulation and compliance. The function monitors the compliance of the water and wastewater network and treatment works, influences external environmental policy and manages environmental stakeholder relationships. Environmental Regulation provides expertise to the Uisce Éireann business on influencing environmental policy and managing stakeholders around environmental regulation affecting Uisce Éireann's practices. The function provides regulatory expertise to the business, including the Senior Leadership Team, in all aspects of environmental regulation. The team provides support on legislative and regulatory changes that will affect Uisce Éireann policies in the future.

The Drinking Water Compliance Team is responsible for managing the provision of drinking water monitoring processes with the centralised focus of ensuring both statutory and operational requirements are met. The team develop and support a national strategy for monitoring, sampling, and analytical services across chemical, microbiological, virus and specialist parametric criteria.

Reporting to the Regional Drinking Water Compliance Manager, the Drinking Water Compliance Technical Lead supports asset operations and asset planning in the identification of risk, and in the identification of appropriate interventions to reduce / manage risk across water treatment works and associated networks/agglomerations. The role holder shall maintain effective stakeholder engagement with the EPA, HSE & IFI and the public as required to ensure regulatory requirements are fulfilled and assist in mitigating further escalation. A large part of the role will also involve proactive compliance / auditing activities and liaison with relevant stakeholders to implement the required interventions to manage risk.

Main Duties and Responsibilities

• Act as a point of escalation for Compliance Analysts to address key issues.
• Act as the primary point of contact for sampling and monitoring concerns liaising with the Sampling team & UÉ Laboratory Services Contract Manager to ensure concerns are addressed within contract requirements.
• Prepare internal compliance reports for the Regional Drinking Water Compliance Manager and coordinate routine compliance and KPI reporting activities on behalf of the region.
• Responsible for developing an UÉ risk based auditing plan, including internal reporting of audit findings.
• Responsible for coordinating and attending site inspections and site audits with relevant internal stakeholders, and attendance where necessary at regulatory audits associated with high risk incidents/ parametric failures as required by the Regional Drinking Water Compliance Manager.
• Identify and analyse relevant data to enable effective identification of drinking water risks to assist Asset Operations and Asset Planning with decision making and with implementing corrective actions and / or interventions to manage risk.
• Responsible for providing input into the post incident review process to the identification of underlying causes, and trends in incidents, informing the identification and implementation of preventative activities from a compliance perspective, ensuring lessons learned are implemented from a monitoring and sampling perspective to reduce the likelihood and/or severity of a reoccurring incident.
• Responsible for recording data on risk events that have caused or may cause impacts to compliance, operations and service delivery.
• Organise the collected data, highlight contributing factors and determine common contributing factors across multiple events and communicate findings to the wider business.
• Establish and maintain effective working relationships with internal and external stakeholders advising and influencing towards best practice procedures for incidents.
• Undertake systematic reviews/audits of incident and emergency response plans, procedures and systems to ensure statutory compliance requirements are met and liaise with asset operations as required.
• Provide information and advice to Uisce Éireann employees on incident response plans and procedures in relation to compliance e.g., requirements in relation to incident notification and escalation procedures.
• Liaise with external organisations (HSE, EPA; IFI) during and after incidents as required by the Regional Drinking Water Compliance Manager.
• Responsible for coordinating and liaising with the relevant business units to effectively and efficiently investigate and respond to customer complaints.
• Liaise with customer service team to ensure members of the Public are kept up to date in relation to high profile incident cases and UÉs corrective and preventative measures are communicated in relation to same.
• Work closely with Environmental Strategy to ensure catchment activities are focused in priority areas.
• Manage significant environmental pollution events resulting from drinking water treatment plant activities as required by the Regional Drinking Water Compliance Manager.
• Assist in the management of environmental pollution incidents which may impact water treatment plant activities or result from treatment plant activities as required by the Regional Drinking Water Compliance Manager.
• Responsible for supporting the adherence to all UÉ policies and procedures including HSQE plans, policies and procedures.
• Responsible for carrying out any other duties deemed necessary and / or required, which the Regional Drinking Water Compliance Manager may reasonably request.

General Duties and Responsibilities

• Collaboration with key internal stakeholders across the UÉ business.
• Responsible for promoting and delivering health and safety commitments across UÉ and its supply chain, reinforcing positive behaviours and delivering health and safety objectives and requirements to the highest industry standards.
• Support the delivery of the Uisce Éireann Transformation Programme, driving results required within the Directorate and supporting organisation wide objectives.
• Conducts duties and responsibilities in accordance with Uisce Éireann's Information Security policies, standards, processes and controls to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of UÉ business information and delivery of critical services, in accordance with the NIS Directive and any other relevant cybersecurity regulation.
• Other duties as required.

Knowledge, Skills and Experience

• Relevant third level qualification and or accreditation is desirable.
• A minimum of 5 years' experience in the water, utilities or similar industries is desirable and or relevant experience.
• Ability to develop and maintain effective strategic partnerships with key stakeholders internally and externally and offer guidance and support to make the right decisions.
• Experience in managing end to end processes to ensure delivery meets customer expectations.
• Proven track record with dealing with complex issues, proactively and in a timely fashion along with the ability to communicate information to others.
• Highly motivated individual, working to the highest professional and ethical standards with proven ability to deliver results.
• Strong analytical skills and ability to identify and analyse problems and potential improvements, and propose and implement solutions.
• Demonstrate adaptability and the ability to change focus and direction in line with business strategy and requirements.
• Experience in contributing to a safe working environment by checking regularly that safety and wellbeing practices are being followed.

The closing date for receipt of applications for this vacancy is 05/06/:59 PM.

Please be advised that if successful you will be placed on the salary range based on your skills and experience. The Market reference point (midpoint) of the range is generally the upper end of the offer where someone is deemed to be fully competent to take on the duties of the role . click apply for full job details