• Provide leadership and support to the staff producing gas and electricity volume forecasts for the UK retail business and all segments within New Business. This will entail strong leadership and management skills to motivate the team to produce high quality forecasts while developing the individual members to their full potential.
• Drive the development and transformation of the volume forecasting processes and techniques to meet the challenging needs of the business. This will entail the post holder applying their extensive mathematical, statistical and industry knowledge to review and challenge the current forecasting processes and revise working methods.
• Work with stakeholders and take responsibility for the team meeting any internal or external targets for forecasting performance. Build the reputation of the team as a centre of excellence in forecasting.
• Develop the relationship between the Volume Forecasting team and key stakeholder groups that include other Portfolio Management teams, Market Operations, UK Finance, and the management teams of the Residential, SME, Corporates and New Business businesses. This will include the design and development of appropriate performance measures that reflect the value of forecasting to the business.
• Deliver a forecasting service to Commodity Portfolio Optimisation and Market Operations in line with the operational requirements of the wholesale market transaction process.
• Deliver estimates and analysis of actual volumes to support the management accounts and financial and regulatory reporting processes.
• Work closely with the Portfolio Management Risk team and IT to drive forward strategic improvements, developments and maintenance of Volume Forecasting systems.
• Using their extensive industry experience and expertise, the forecasting team will be expected to participate in appropriate industry expert groups and provide advice and guidance to colleagues on regulatory and industry change matters from a profiling and volume forecasting perspective.
• Member of the senior leadership team for Portfolio Management as well as Head of the Assets Customer Team, ensuring our customer requirements are being met.
• Undertake responsibility for the commodity risk governance framework that controls adjustments to hedged wholesale market positions (the Commodity Governance Forum's Volume Adjustment Process, requiring multiple E-level sign-off).
• Manage the Volume Adjustment Process to ensure that the financial effects of volume adjustments are fully aligned with the relevant Finance Energy Segments teams.
• Delegate for the Head of Portfolio Management (E Level Manager) as required.
• Responsible for producing accurate long and short term forecasts of c. 60 TWh of gas and 45 TWh of electricity purchases a year worth c. £ 7 billion.
• Full decision making authority for all short term forecast assumptions.
• Forecasting accuracy at the balancing stage has a direct impact on imbalance costs of c. £25m a year.
• Accurate forecasts in the day-ahead to 14 days-ahead timescales present an opportunity to mitigate the impact of weather related volume risks of the order of £30 - £50 million a year.
• Responsibility to drive appropriate forecasting assumptions and model changes through the long term forecasting sign off process to ensure forecasting accuracy.
• Forecasting accuracy in hedging timescales has a direct impact on purchase cost risk amounting to many £10s of millions a year.
• Managing circa £200k of professional services contacts.
• Business responsibility for Volume Forecasting IT projects (currently 2 x £1m+ projects and 2 x £0.5m+ projects).