It's an exciting time at IWM as we centralise Collections Development functions. Together with the AD Collections Management you will lead this process by recruiting a new team; working together to ensure commissioning, acquisition, loans in, and dispersal (through disposal, and loans out) to enable the Museum to develop its collections and the social impact of our brand.

You will bring strategic management skills, in addition to your skills in managing collections assets, to undertake data, business, and risk analysis to set and monitor the strategic direction for your team. This will enable you to shape, recruit and develop your team to move from analogue to fully digital working. Your strategy will define and profile the workload accurately for each form of collections development, including backlogs, informed by risk to determine the resourcing and optimum location for this work. You will drive change and innovation, aligning the work of your team with connected digital projects (such as, our new project to create one customer journey to enable our internal and external users) and informed by adjacent strategies (such as, but not limited to, our Social Impact Framework; and Benchmarking visits to other National Museums).

Confident in your skills and experience you will work with a wide range of peers to commission systems development and reporting to drive innovation and capability. You will empower your team to work collaboratively to remedy communications breakdowns and manage interfaces between workstreams, at times bringing clarity to roles and responsibilities to facilitate the transition from analogue to digital working.

Under your leadership, each form of collections development will have; transparent and streamlined processes, clear reporting and resourcing, key performance indicators and management checks.

In five years', our loan in and out specialists will be working digitally and managed by collection specialists, enabling efficiencies and better sharing of expertise. This will not only ensure loans will be accountable but drive change so that decisions to lend are led by social impact and taken transparently at our Collections Development Committee. This will be supported by increased digital skills: electronic document sharing, signing and tools to equalize the experience the users experience regardless of their location to free knowledgeable staff from reactive administration and enable them to be outwardly focused. This will help IWM achieve its aspirations to increase public understanding of war and conflict.

Your duties will include:

Collections Development Programme Management

Together with the with relevant Heads of Department you will develop and implement a Strategy for the Collections Registration. Development of this will see the reciprocal development of policies, programmes of work and training so that we assure both our social impact and collections governance. This programme will sit within our Collections Management Programme and Corporate Plan. You will bring oversight to all Collections Development activity, at a strategic level, this includes liaison with commissioning, collecting and partnership teams, such as the Collecting Departments, IWM 14-18 NOW Legacy Fund and the Subject Specialist Network to ensure our strategies align. Ensuring that the Collections Development Committee continues to operate successfully under the strategic direction of the Collections Management Board. Proactively progress decision making and consultation processes supporting acquisition, disposal and collections management with SMT, ELT, the Director-General, and Trustees, and externally with ACE, MA and DCMS. You team will take day-to-day responsibility for collections development, quantifying risk, disaggregating the strategy to projects for teams to deliver and reporting to the Collections Development Committee. You will drive change by leading projects to modernising working practices, development of policies, procedures and our corporate systems informed by best practice in the sector. Your management style will be open, and you will be able to support staff in all roles within the Museum in engaging with the role that they can play in collections development. For example, in the case of staff managed by the Head of Conservation / Exhibitions you will ensure that they are fully aware of the strategies. Equally, your own staff will draw upon the expertise in Conservation, Curation, Estates and Security teams. You will write management and quarterly project monitoring reports of management checks and contribute to the annual accounts and bids for funding internally and externally. The test of success with be judged through customer comments and maintaining our status as an accredited museum and archive. Provision of Advice

You will be the Museum's lead advocate for Collections Development, advising senior staff. You will inform complex projects across the Museum's branches and, on occasion, lead projects- integrating specialist stakeholder knowledge for specification and selection of services. You will advise on complex acquisition and disposal cases. Liaising (as necessary) with external parties, the museum sector and suppliers to ensure acquisition, disposal and collections management processes are undertaken appropriately and oversee that all resource associated with acquisition and disposal is accurate, timely and appropriately assessed, documented and undertaken. Collections Development Team Management

Manage the team to assess items under collections development; recommend commensurate options and deliver the agreed corporate strategy and priorities. This will be informed by risk monitoring and analysis. You and your team will undertake the following activities, as appropriate: Maintaining quantification of the finance and reputational risk and the direction of travel in that risk with respect to IWM and the public purse, and mitigation of the risks identified via effective day-to-day management of the Government Indemnity Scheme and Insurance. Maintaining contracts, informed by current legal precedents Maintain an overview of status of contracts and items in terms of period, condition, valuation, and licences and hazards sufficient to minimise exposure Maintain control of cultural property within our care where we can no longer trace the owner and/or to minimise exposure Maintain up to date advice on legal, ethical and moral issues such as, but not limited to, title, acquisition, collecting material from conflicts, and disposal sufficient to exercise professional judgement with respect to the objects' proposed use Commissioning advice on security, environment, hazards, and value for loans Commissioning services such as condition reporting, documentation, imaging, location and movement, systems configuration, transport, and valuation Transport planning for collections nationally and internationally, including hazardous and licenced collections Couriering complex loans For a full list of duties and the person specification (which your application will be marked against) please view the Job Description on the IWM Jobs Page.