Vacancy for Technical Operations Manager (Touring Exhibitions)

We are a world-class visitor attraction and leading science research centre. We use the Museum’s unique collections and our unrivalled expertise to tackle the biggest challenges facing the world today. We care for more than 80 million objects spanning billions of years and welcome more than five million visitors annually and 16 million visits to our website. Today the Museum is more relevant and influential than ever. By attracting people from a range of backgrounds to work for us, we can continue to look at the world with fresh eyes and find new ways of doing things. We employ 900 staff in a variety of roles, all united by our vision of a future where people and planet thrive. We need everyone to have the passion and drive to help us with our mission to create advocates for our planet and inspire millions to care about the natural world.

Job description

Touring Exhibitions play a key role in the Natural History Museum achieving its objectives as outlined in A Planetary Emergency: Our response strategy to 2031. Not only do they enable the Museum to work with various organisations around the world to reach large, diverse and new audiences but they also help us to remain financially sustainable through generating commercial income.

The Museum’s touring exhibitions travel the world and are seen by over 2 million visitors outside London each year. Our partners and hosting venues are Museums, galleries, science centres and private companies that present NHM exhibition in all kinds of spaces ranging in size from local museums to world leading peer institutions. The Touring Exhibitions department is a busy and multi-international team who cover a range of different skill sets from engineering to object handling and operational expertise to sales and marketing. The Operational team oversees the delivery of large turnkey exhibitions at hosting venues. The post holder will report to the Senior Operations Manager. International travel will be required for this role.

We are looking for someone who has:

• Experience working in a medium-large organisation or institution. Experience of working on museum temporary/touring exhibitions desirable but not essential.
• Solid knowledge and experience of Health & Safety requirements and standard operating procedures, including producing and reviewing risk assessments and method statements.
• Experience in a workshop and/or working site environment.
• Ability to work in a wide range of conditions and environments performing tasks with the manual dexterity relevant to the job description. For example, working at height and working in a building site environment.
• Experience of procuring and managing external contractors and suppliers.
• Ability to work to agreed budgets and obtain cost estimates for clients and project operational budgets, ensuring value for money.
• Strong record keeping and organisational skills.
• Good written communication skills using MS Office Suite.
• Effective verbal communication skills, personal presentation and an ability to represent the Museum to external clients, suppliers and contractors.
• Ability to quickly resolve complex technical problems using creative and analytical skills across a wide variety of tasks.
• Holds valid UK Driving Licence (required).
• Holds SMSTS (Site Managers Safety Training Scheme) certificate, or willingness to obtain said certificate upon being offered the advertised role. The NHM’s offer of employment would be conditional upon successful obtaining of the SMSTS certificate, after which the contract of employment would be issued.
• MEWP licence and First Aid At Work certificate (both desirable)