Senior Research and Innovation Project Manager

at  Alder Hey Childrens NHS Foundation Trust

The Children’s Hospital Alliance (CHA) brings together specialist and large children’s hospitals across the UK. The network is growing, with 13 member trusts in England and an associate member in Wales (Cardiff).

We use our voice as a group of expert children’s providers, collaborating

• To learn from each other and innovate;
• To lead on service transformation and elective recovery, tackling health inequalities;
• To advocate for children and young people.

Through our shared work programmes we aim ultimately to improve working lives of staff and the quality, access & experience of hospital care for children, young people and their families.
Member trusts are now self-funding a programme team to maintain momentum & realise the potential of this new collaborative way of working. For the first time in 2024, this includes a research workstream.
The Senior Research and Innovation Project Manager is a new two-year post that will coordinate, support and generate collaborative research activity across 12 children’s hospitals and deliver a priority setting partnership with the James Lind Alliance (JLA).

Analytical skills

• Both during workshops and outside them, elicit complex information and a range of views from different stakeholders, analyse the areas of overlap / difference, and propose and present a consensus position that can move the project forward. In particular, understand the different suggested areas for research priorities, group them thematically, and generate a synthesis that draws on a wide range of suggestions in order to develop a coherent set of JLA research priorities.
• Ensures project specific reports are provided at agreed time points in the project(s) lifetime.
• Ability to perform complex analyses and interpretations to review clinical and project data, including presenting data in a variety of formats, bar charts, statistical process control charts across a range of performance aspects (quality, cost, delivery etc.).
• Ability to track data continuously to quickly resolve failures to meet project requirements and take appropriate action as appropriate.
• To regularly interrogate and provide data as needed.
• To ensure that all records and information are maintained in a way that allows up-to-date and timely information to be available.
• Intervene as necessary, in order to remain on plan, escalate in a pro-active manner, problem solve or resolve through effective communication.
• Lead and facilitate workshops as needed to lead projects, to build consensus, ensure that areas for further development are identified and actions are detailed and tracked.
• Develop systems and processes with research leads to identify benefits from project activity and report these back through appropriate groups and papers

Planning and organising skills

• To ensure that the CHA research project deliverables are met and are aligned to the workstream aims.
• To ensure all project assurance documentation is consistent with the requirements of the governance requirements.
• Creates, launches & executes robust project plans articulating milestones, timescales, stakeholders etc (Gantt charts etc.) using a plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycle or similar.
• Co-ordinates marketing and communication activities when needed.
• Robustly plans project activities ahead of timescales, such as meetings, teleconferences, and web seminars and establishes and proactively manages these programme timelines.
• Leads all research project meetings, pulling in specialists (Finance, IT, etc) as necessary.
• Applies expertise to react to unplanned situations, for example is able to act quickly to re-align a project plan as health care environments change daily.
• Takes an active role in developing policies and procedures and proposing changes as and when required.
• Contributes to the development and continual improvement of the processes and systems of work within the CHA and Alder Hey Clinical Research Division, including providing mentorship and coaching to more junior members of the team as appropriate.
• To be responsible for self-organisation/time management able to plan and manage time efficiently.
• Plan and organise a demanding workload and manage conflicting priorities with minimal supervision.
• Managing several threads simultaneously, i.e. running an activity, prepping for next, sustaining a previous and monitoring other on-going work such as projects.
• Is able to manage a potentially unpredictable work pattern, planning for the frequent requirement for concentration and answering queries

Physical skills

• Combination of sitting, standing and walking.
• Frequent requirement to use VDU & keyboard

• Promoting, coordinating and supporting engagement and collaborative research activity with a range of research staff across the 12 children’s hospitals.
• Identifying, developing and supporting the project management of new collaborative research opportunities in priority thematic areas. This will involve identifying resources, capacity and funding sources.
• Communicating regularly and effectively across stakeholders, multiple partners and CHA leaders about project progress and activity and opportunities.
• Coordinating the completion of a priority setting partnership with the James Lind Alliance, including working proactively with a wider range of stakeholders and children, young people and families.
• Robustly project planning and reporting on the progress of all project activity and documenting outcomes.
  They will ensure that the needs of children and young people are foremost in research, that research undertaken features meaningful Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) and that we are not discriminating or inequitable in how we develop and design research.
  The Children’s Hospital Alliance have a small but perfectly formed project management team who will work closely with the post holder. The post will also be embedded within the Clinical Research Division within Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust.
  Main duties and responsibilities

Communication

• Brings together large groups of stakeholders, to shape and facilitate a conversation so as to generate consensus out of a complex range of views.
• Develops and fosters relationships with key stakeholders and proactively manages these relationships such that members can count on reliable and knowledgeable support and information about the projects or other activities.
• Provides a high level of content knowledge about all aspects of their projects and is able to act as an approachable source of knowledge to stakeholders.
• Creates links across organisations for the benefit of their projects.
• Acts as a key liaison/communication link between individuals, teams, organisations and other project stakeholders.
• Managing project activity in conjunction with Finance, Procurement and Information colleagues throughout the projects’ lifecycle to ensure opportunities are identified & capitalised on through implementation.
• Builds networks and relationships across organisations to be able to develop cooperation with other teams to support/enable project delivery.
• Ability to present (both formally and informally) to clinical and non-clinical teams/colleagues across the CHA about the scope, content and timescales associated with their projects.
• Provides subject matter expertise to the CHA and member Trusts and actively promotes the use of project management methodology and transformation techniques.
• Takes an active approach to learning new and different transformational improvement techniques. Open to new ways of working and brings fresh ideas to research activity.
• Uses motivational skills to enthuse teams to work in an innovative manner, challenge current practices in particular where there is resistance to change.
• Ability to communicate sensitive or complex information about performance or change with a high level of sensitivity and diplomacy
• Use negotiating skills and excellent communication skills and emotional intelligence to build consensus within a large group of stakeholders

Analytical skills

• Both during workshops and outside them, elicit complex information and a range of views from different stakeholders, analyse the areas of overlap / difference, and propose and present a consensus position that can move the project forward. In particular, understand the different suggested areas for research priorities, group them thematically, and generate a synthesis that draws on a wide range of suggestions in order to develop a coherent set of JLA research priorities.
• Ensures project specific reports are provided at agreed time points in the project(s) lifetime.
• Ability to perform complex analyses and interpretations to review clinical and project data, including presenting data in a variety of formats, bar charts, statistical process control charts across a range of performance aspects (quality, cost, delivery etc.).
• Ability to track data continuously to quickly resolve failures to meet project requirements and take appropriate action as appropriate.
• To regularly interrogate and provide data as needed.
• To ensure that all records and information are maintained in a way that allows up-to-date and timely information to be available.
• Intervene as necessary, in order to remain on plan, escalate in a pro-active manner, problem solve or resolve through effective communication.
• Lead and facilitate workshops as needed to lead projects, to build consensus, ensure that areas for further development are identified and actions are detailed and tracked.
• Develop systems and processes with research leads to identify benefits from project activity and report these back through appropriate groups and papers.

Planning and organising skills

• To ensure that the CHA research project deliverables are met and are aligned to the workstream aims.
• To ensure all project assurance documentation is consistent with the requirements of the governance requirements.
• Creates, launches & executes robust project plans articulating milestones, timescales, stakeholders etc (Gantt charts etc.) using a plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycle or similar.
• Co-ordinates marketing and communication activities when needed.
• Robustly plans project activities ahead of timescales, such as meetings, teleconferences, and web seminars and establishes and proactively manages these programme timelines.
• Leads all research project meetings, pulling in specialists (Finance, IT, etc) as necessary.
• Applies expertise to react to unplanned situations, for example is able to act quickly to re-align a project plan as health care environments change daily.
• Takes an active role in developing policies and procedures and proposing changes as and when required.
• Contributes to the development and continual improvement of the processes and systems of work within the CHA and Alder Hey Clinical Research Division, including providing mentorship and coaching to more junior members of the team as appropriate.
• To be responsible for self-organisation/time management able to plan and manage time efficiently.
• Plan and organise a demanding workload and manage conflicting priorities with minimal supervision.
• Managing several threads simultaneously, i.e. running an activity, prepping for next, sustaining a previous and monitoring other on-going work such as projects.
• Is able to manage a potentially unpredictable work pattern, planning for the frequent requirement for concentration and answering queries.

Physical skills

• Combination of sitting, standing and walking.
• Frequent requirement to use VDU & keyboard.

Responsibility for policy/service development

• Work with the CHA to contribute to standard work processes, target setting, policy development and monitoring related to the research workstream.
• Integrate the work of continuous improvement into every day working.
• Encourage innovation and identify opportunities for continual improvement.

Responsibility for financial and physical resources

• Management of resources as required within the role.
• Where required, fulfils project budget tracking/management requirements.

Responsibility for information resources

• Confident and capable user of Microsoft packages to produce and present relevant reports.
• Ability to handle and analyse data and manipulate into simple formats to interpret findings.
• Using IT effectively to monitor performance of projects and tracking of tasks.
• Capture relevant information to record project performance against key milestones.

Responsibility for research and development

• Transfer knowledge relating to improvement methodologies applied through project delivery.
• Assist in development & delivery of educational/training programmes as appropriate.
• Provides focussed knowledge transfer as part of project work to a variety of project stakeholders.
• To take responsibility for own learning and development including identifying any areas of learning that might add to the knowledge base within the CHA & its stakeholders.
• To lead surveys and audits using internal and external web-based applications in support of project work as required.
• Acts as an autonomous lead in the planning and organising of meetings, workshops and courses.
• Takes personal accountability for individual PDR ensuring review cycle is adhered to in line with appropriate policies.
• Leads workshops and sessions to generate engagement and enthusiasm around research projects.
• Provides specialist expertise and leadership in setting timescales, managing project milestones, and overall successful project completion.
• Leads the delivery of CHA research projects ensuring appropriate engagement of stakeholders throughout.