Continuous Improvement Specialist

**Continuous Improvement Specialist**
- ** 12 month initial contract for asset intensive essential services provider with strong market presence**:

- ** Be part of something bigger - we play a critical role in Australia's supply chain and keep the economy and country moving**:

- ** Values based business where you will work at all levels in the organization**:

- ** Extend your existing process improvement experience**:

- ** Newcastle based role**

**_ Pacific National is committed to diversity in our workforce and encourages women and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to apply._**

**About the role**

The Pacific National Continuous Improvement Program leverages the world class Lean business improvement tools and techniques whereby key processes are improved using a structured methodology based on data analysis and effective change management. Continuous Improvement Specialists are dedicated full-time to strategic initiatives across all parts of the business and are mainly focused on business improvement style initiatives that deliver material commercial impact.

With significant benefits already delivered to the business, numerous initiatives in progress and many projects in the pipeline, this critical team is leading the charge to transform Pacific National (PN) and improve our day to day business. All your work is focused on building and promoting a continuous improvement culture with a strong focus on improvement sustainability.

Reporting to the Continuous Improvement Manager, you will have responsibility to:

- Provide leadership for the development of a customer-centric culture fostering deep employee engagement with the PN values of "supporting our customers to succeed is at the heart of all we do"
- Deliver bespoke continuous improvement (CI) projects - working closely with site leadership teams to help support any ad-hoc CI projects as they arise. This includes understanding key business drivers, de-constructing the highlighted opportunity, scoping of improvement initiative, facilitating an agreeable solution and managing the roll out from end-to-end
- Manage Project Governance - creating, maintaining, updating and communicating project plans, driving cross functional project teams and tracking each project through to completion.
- Form a strong alliance with the Business Reporting and Analytics team to formulate initiative savings validity
- Deliver regular updates on CI project progress to the Initiative Owners and Sponsors, highlighting risks and concerns
- Validate and determine the financial validity of the improvement initiative.

**About you**

You will have a background in process and continuous improvement with strong data analysis skills. You will have the ability to build business relationships coupled with a strong desire to exceed your internal customers' expectations. Experience leading change in challenging environment and navigating across a large complex business is essential.

In addition you will have the following skills, experience and attributes:

- Experience with process change projects
- Superior analytical thinking and ability to quickly acquire technical / process knowledge to understand a functional area/process, its interdependencies with other areas/processes and how it fits into the overall system/business
- Proficiency with MS PowerPoint, Excel and MS Project, any experience with MS Visio Tableau will be highly regarded
- Lean certification is desirable but not essential
- Effective communication style that translates into effective stakeholder management skills at all levels
- Demonstrated experience assembling multidisciplinary project teams in understanding process problems as well as planning and facilitating team workshops to challenge and change existing practices, solve problems and improve processes
- The ability to acquire, manage, distil and analyse data/information from data sets.

**The benefits**

We value diversity, inclusion, collaboration and the contribution of each of our employees. Working for us will enable you to take ownership of your career and gain access to the following benefits:

- Opportunities for growth and career development
- Access to mentoring programs
- Opportunities to join our I&D employee committees
- Recognise, celebrate and achieve via our Achievers program
- Flexible working arrangements
- Opportunity to purchase additional annual leave
- Provision of Salary Continuance Insurance
- Novated leasing and discounts on selected health insurance funds, travel, gyms, retail brands, vehicles and more.
- We are proud to be a WORK180 Endorsed Employer.

**About us**

Pacific National (PN) is the largest provider of diversified rail freight services in Australia. We haul a variety of freight including coal, intermodal containers, steel, and a range of bulk commodities and materials that keep the region's economy, businesses and households running. We operate nationally with approximately 3,500 staff in over 90+ s