Senior External Operations Manager

It's everyone's stadium

Wembley Park and the area surrounding Wembley Stadium has been through a period of significant transformation and is now a thriving London neighbourhood, with an exciting combination of a world class events destination, new homes, iconic venues, great shops and workspaces.

As our operating environment continues to evolve across the Wembley Park Estate and the complexity of our operations and stakeholder relationship and dependence increases, the Senior External Operations will deliver operational activities between the Stadium and Quintain (the owners of Wembley Park), LB Brent and the transport stakeholder community to ensure the Football Association's operational, and commercial interests are protected from and enhanced by the emerging development, whist ensuring the highest levels of public safety and customer experience are maintained.

What will you be doing?

• Deliver the planning and operational delivery of Zone Ex around Wembley Stadium, ensuring a best-in-class safety, visitor and mobility experience, whilst minimising local disruption and maintaining compliance with relevant and forthcoming legislation / guidance, including but not limited to Martyn's Law and the Guide to Safety at Sports Grounds.
• Support the strategic and operational relationship with Councillors, and the senior leadership team at Brent Council to ensure all workstreams are delivered to the mutual benefit of Brent council and the FA.
• Manage External Operations consultants, suppliers and contractors and ensure delivery is aligned with their contractual commitments.
• Support and administer the agreed Estate Management Agreement (EMA) between The FA and Quintain enabling the safe delivery of events at Wembley Stadium.
• Deliver the Transport Master plan, identifying the travel options for all client groups, workforce and visitors to the venue, whilst maintaining excellent relationships with senior transport stakeholders.
• Positively contribute to operational planning meetings with all external stakeholders. Support and coordinate the interface between internal and external stakeholders, and the integration of the Stadium into the London Borough of Brent.
• Support the delivery of a sofa-to-sofa experience for the venue's audience on match days through detailed coordination and collaboration with all external stakeholders and operators.
• Lead, attend, and arrange as necessary or defined in the EMA, meetings with all relevant parties to consider and review development proposals ensuring key decisions and action points are accurately recorded and agreed between respective parties.
• Represent the Football Association at design/planning presentations. Ensure proposals are evaluated by subject matter experts to determine any potential commercial, operational or crowd safety issues that require resolution. Collate professional advice and approvals where required to "signoff" on proposals.
• Line Management of Ext Ops event delivery team coordinating workload, personal development, and rota management
• Highlight any issues that generate concerns to the stadium / Football Association (operationally, commercially or on crowd safety grounds). Progress such issues to a satisfactory and mutually agreeable solutions. With support from the relevant WNSL functional area or relevant external body.
• Identify and consult with key stakeholders to make them aware of development proposals (including phasing and timelines) to determine operational, commercial or crowd safety issues that need to be resolved to a mutually agreeable situation.
• Represent the Stadium/FA at local resident forums as required. Support and coordinate the interface between internal functional areas and the resident groups, enabling operational planning teams to be responsive to the changing requirements of our local residents and the new operating environment.
• Deliver monthly workshops to internal stakeholder groups, providing detailed updates on the Wembley Park development programmes, highlighting areas of opportunity and risk.
• Work with the Internal/External Communications team to prepare any messaging ensuring the integrity and reputation of the Stadium / Football Association is preserved.
• Responsible for the delivery and planning of event day stadium Fanzone operations and identify continuous improvement opportunities by working with relevant FA departments including commercial, projects and safety.
• Identify opportunities to improve the external merchandise operations and when required deliver temporary overlay to support pop up mega stores and activations.
• Deliver event day HVM arrangements ensuring compliance across all partners and review policy and procedures with our Head of Security and in line with our ATTRO commitments
• Development, coordination and oversight of External Operations major annual projects
• Engage in The FA's business planning process and develop the Ext Ops Teams long-term strategy and objectives
• Strategic oversight of the Best-in-Class programme with focus on developing long-term aims and objectives to further improve spectator experience.
• Work with other FA Departments (marketing, commercial etc) to develop viable brand opportunities across the external footprint
• Implement all WNSL policies and procedures.
• Executes additional tasks as required in order to meet FA Group's changing priorities.
• Comply with all company policies and procedures to ensure the highest standards of health, safety and well-being can be maintained.
• As part of The FA's commitment to ensuring a safe environment for everyone in football, every employee will be required to complete a DBS check. The level of the check required will be based on the activity of the specific job role and in line with legislation and government guidance.

What are we looking for?

Essential for the role:

• Highly experienced and qualified project manager
• Experienced in major event planning, delivery and incident management
• Experience of multi-stakeholder management in an event and wider estate environment.
• Experience of leading teams to deliver tight and immovable deadlines
• Experience in delivering mobility plans and external operations for events, tournaments or venues.
• Experience of budget control and delivering to service specifications
• Proven communication skills and ability to deliver quality written reports
• Accustomed to working with a high level of corporate and public scrutiny.
• Good understanding in Crowd Management and modelling
• Good understanding of current planning law and policy

Beneficial to have:

• Open, with high integrity and a positive can-do attitude
• Good negotiation and relationship management skills
• Ability to co-ordinate numerous stakeholders and to work in partnership
• Ability to assimilate with other FAs and to ensure an integrated approach to planning
• Pragmatic and practical with a clear eye on solutions
• Prepared to take accountability and to make decisions
• Good influencer and communicator
• Flexible & adaptable through organizational growth
• Resilient & positive through change
• Analytical and organised
• Approachable and friendly
• Ability to promote and foster a team culture where values such as excellence, hard work, service to stakeholders, honesty, integrity, and achievement are paramount

What's in it for you?

We are committed to ensuring everyone can flourish in their roles, to achieve this we have unique office spaces under the arch of the iconic Wembley National Stadium, which is the home of English Football. We are also delighted to offer a world-class, Elite Performance Centre, St. George's Park in Staffordshire which is an exceptional setting to develop and inspire high-performing England teams and leaders.

We pride ourselves in offering a competitive salary as well as great opportunities to develop and grow in your role. But that is not all; we also have a range of exciting benefits, some of which can be found below:

• Access to event day tickets at Wembley Stadium, alongside a host of regular internal events throughout the season, encouraging you to connect and learn with your colleagues and look after your mental health and wellbeing.
• Free, nutritious lunches, at Wembley Stadium and St. George's Park.
• Free private medical cover.
• A contributory pension scheme.
• An additional 'Thank You' days leave, volunteering days as well as 25 days annual leave (based on a full-time, permanent contract.)
• A hybrid working model which offers greater flexibility.

For more information on what it is like to work at The FA, please visit our FA Careers page,

We are a diverse workplace, aspiring to represent football across the country. The Football Association actively promotes inclusion and diversity, encouraging you to be the best version of yourself at work.

We welcome applications from everyone and are proud to be an equal opportunities employer. If you have any particular requirements in respect of the recruitment or interview process, please mention this during your application.

As part of The FA's commitment to ensuring a safe environment for everyone in football, every employee will be required to complete a DBS check . click apply for full job details