Asset Operations Manager - BESS

About the Role
GPE is seeking an experienced Asset Operations Manager to lead the operational management of our growing Australian Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) portfolio.
This is a senior owner-side role responsible for ensuring our operating assets are safe, reliable, compliant and commercially optimised throughout their operational life.
The role will provide portfolio-level oversight of asset performance, O&M contractors, OEMs and Long-Term Service Agreements (LTSAs), operational expenditure, outages, lifecycle planning, risk and operational governance.
Importantly, this is not a hands-on engineering or maintenance management position. The Asset Operations Manager will be supported by contracted site teams, technical specialists and dedicated engineering capability. The role is responsible for ensuring those parties perform, challenging them where required, protecting GPE's contractual and commercial position, and making informed owner-side decisions.
As our BESS portfolio continues to grow, the successful candidate will also play an important role in developing a scalable Asset Operations model and shaping our longer-term operational and internalisation strategy.

Responsibilities

Key Responsibilities
The Asset Operations Manager will be responsible for:
•  own portfolio-level operational performance, including availability, reliability, performance trends, operational risks and continuous improvement initiatives;
•  proactively manage O&M service providers against their contractual obligations, KPIs, service levels, resourcing commitments and performance requirements;
•  manage OEM and LTSA performance, including service obligations, warranties, defects, contractual milestones, performance commitments and associated commercial entitlements;
•  manage operational budgets, OPEX forecasts, contractor costs, variations, additional services and opportunities for contractual recovery or cost optimisation;
•  develop and coordinate forward outage strategies with O&M contractors, OEMs, network service providers and Trading, including availability forecasts, operational constraints, dispatch impacts and timely communication of planned and unplanned outages;
•  maintain visibility of asset condition, major maintenance requirements, component replacement strategies and long-term lifecycle expenditure;
•  provide owner oversight of material technical issues, ensuring investigations, root-cause analysis and corrective actions are appropriately undertaken by the responsible engineering, O&M or OEM parties;
•  provide owner-side oversight of HSE, electrical safety, environmental, regulatory and operational compliance, ensuring specialist parties implement controls and provide appropriate assurance and evidence;
•  ensure SOCI/CIRMP and relevant security obligations are appropriately reflected in O&M and OEM arrangements, including remote access, firmware/software changes, third-party OT access, incident escalation, evidence provision and corrective-action close-out;
•  ensure operational security incidents and notifiable changes are promptly escalated to GPE Compliance so applicable reporting and Register-update deadlines can be met; coordinate operating-asset evidence and actions for the annual CIRMP report;
•  oversee operating-asset obligations under GPE’s NER Compliance Obligations Register ensuring compliance testing, plant/setting change approvals, operational records and required notifications are coordinated with Grid, Engineering, Trading and service providers;
•  establish a clear Operations–Trading interface covering outage approvals and communications, plant availability and restrictions, dispatch-related operating constraints, performance data and regulatory reporting responsibilities;
•  act as the first-line owner of operating-asset SOCI/CIRMP control implementation (not the enterprise SOCI program), working with GPE Compliance to oversee supply-chain, personnel, physical security, natural hazard and cyber risks across O&M, OEM, control-room and site arrangements;
•  establish disciplined performance-management processes across O&M contractors, OEMs and specialist service providers;
•  Our O&M contractors and OEMs are held accountable for their contractual obligations; technical and regulatory issues are appropriately assigned and resolved;
•  SOCI/CIRMP and NER operating-asset controls are evidenced and monitored;
•  warranties and contractual entitlements are protected;
•  outages and lifecycle expenditure are planned rather than reactive and management has clear visibility of asset performance, risk and future investment requirements;
•  drive standardisation, lessons learned and operational efficiencies across the portfolio and support the continued development of GPE's future Asset Operations and internalisation strategy;
•  provide clear and concise reporting to senior management on asset performance, commercial performance, risk, operational priorities and emerging issues;
•  hold regular occurring meeting’s with the Trading team to review asset performance, availability, open defects, outage plans and emerging risks; and
•  ensure Trading receives timely and accurate communication of any change in generator or BESS availability, including expected duration and return-to-service.

Requirements

About You
You will bring significant experience in asset operations, asset management or operational management within BESS, renewable energy, power generation or major electrical infrastructure. You will ideally have:
•  demonstrated experience managing large-scale operational energy or infrastructure assets;
•  strong experience administering O&M contracts and/or OEM service agreements;
•  sound commercial and contractual judgement;
•  working knowledge of operational compliance frameworks, including NER obligations and SOCI/CIRMP requirements, with the ability to govern specialist delivery and regulatory reporting interfaces;
•  experience managing asset-performance KPIs, operational budgets and contractor performance;
•  experience working with electricity Trading teams on availability, outages, dispatch constraints and operational reporting;
•  experience with warranty, defect and lifecycle management;
•  a strong understanding of HV electrical infrastructure and operational safety frameworks;
•  sufficient technical capability to interrogate asset-performance information and effectively challenge contractors, OEMs and engineering specialists;
•  strong risk-management and operational-governance capability;
•  experience coordinating planned and unplanned outages;
•  excellent stakeholder-management skills across technical, commercial and executive interfaces;
•  the ability to translate complex operational issues into clear recommendations and decisions for senior management;
•  working knowledge of NEM operations, including dispatch, bidding and rebidding, FCAS and AEMO requirements, sufficient to understand how availability and outages affect market outcomes; and
•  the ability to make fast, commercially informed decisions with incomplete information, including under on-call conditions.

Experience operating utility-scale BESS assets within the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM) will be highly regarded.
An engineering, technical, commercial or asset-management qualification is desirable; however, we are principally seeking someone with the operational leadership, commercial capability and judgement required to manage a significant and growing asset portfolio.

Leadership Profile
This role will suit someone who thinks and acts like an asset owner. You will be expected to take accountability for outcomes without unnecessarily taking over the responsibilities of our contractors and service providers.
You will be commercially astute, technically credible and comfortable challenging both internal and external stakeholders. You will be capable of moving between asset-performance data, contractual obligations, technical risks, budgets and strategic portfolio decisions while maintaining focus on the overall performance and value of the assets.
You should also be comfortable establishing systems and ways of working rather than simply inheriting them. As the portfolio grows, the Asset Operations Manager will have a significant opportunity to influence how GPE operates and manages its assets over the long term.

Benefits

Why Join GPE?
This is an opportunity to take a leading role in the operational management of a growing portfolio of large-scale battery energy storage assets.
Rather than managing a single site, you will help establish the systems, commercial disciplines, governance and operating model required to manage an expanding Australian BESS portfolio.
You will work across Operations, Engineering, Delivery, Commercial, Grid, HSE, Finance and Trading, together with leading BESS OEMs, O&M providers and network service providers.
For the right candidate, this represents an opportunity not simply to operate assets, but to help build the Asset Operations function that will manage the next stage of GPE's growth.

Salary

Additional info: What Success Looks Like<br />Success in this role means GPE&#39;s operating assets are safe, available, reliable and commercially well managed.<br />Our O&amp;M contractors and OEMs are held accountable for their contractual obligations; technical issues are appropriately assigned and resolved; warranties and contractual entitlements are protected; outages and lifecycle expenditure are planned rather than reactive; and management has clear visibility of asset performance, risk and future investment requirements.<br />The successful candidate will therefore be comfortable operating at the intersection of technical, operational and commercial asset management.<br />We are looking for someone who knows when to engage deeply with a technical issue, but equally knows when the appropriate role of the asset owner is to challenge, govern and hold its service providers accountable for resolving it.