Local recruitment: Operations Director II

Are you looking for a fantastic career at Aqua? We have a great opportunity for a Director of Operations over our Texas water and wastewater operations. The Director of Operations will report directly to the Aqua TX President and be responsible for the administration and operation of Texas field operations. Aqua TX’s field operations include approximately 400 public water systems and 61 wastewater treatment systems. The ability to build and retain a cohesive team of managers, supervisors, support staff, and field staff is the most important aspect of this position. This position has a team of 5 direct reports and approximately 115 indirect reports.

Essential Duties:

• Leads the operations team and collaboratively works with engineering, compliance, and accounting functional leads to provide safe, reliable high quality water and wastewater service.
• Creates a culture of trust, support and high employee engagement cemented in our values of integrity, responsibility, and commitment to excellence.   Lead the mutual development of performance goals and measurements; provide meaningful performance feedback and evaluations; provide training and growth opportunities; plan and direct work assignments; administer Company policies; and communicate information for effective job performance.
• Drives to improve the customer experience in daily decision making throughout operations team.  Establishes positive, proactive communications in the communities we serve.  Ensures customers are notified promptly and clearly of any problems or issues, or service disruptions.
• Prepares and executes  operating and capital budgets within areas of responsibility. Supervises  operational and capitalized maintenance activities and supports planned vertical and linear capital investments. Works with business development in the coordination and negotiations with developers regarding new systems. Assist in the identification, due diligence, and smooth operational transition of acquisitions.
• Coordinates and negotiates with vendors regarding supplies and/or services needed. Hires and oversees work by contractors and subcontractors, ensuring that the work is performed, and the funds are deployed in the most efficient and effective manner.
• Assists environmental compliance in interaction with environmental regulators regarding current regulations, permit compliance and other matters regarding water and wastewater operations.
• Works closely with the Compliance team to ensure compliance with operating permits and contracts while drafting/submitting responses and or comments to relevant regulatory compliance concerns/issues/requests.
• Institutes and supervises Aqua Texas’s Safety Program.
• Works with others in the organization to develop performance matrices to assure that all resources are used in a cost-effective manner. Uses technology where appropriate to monitor and manage. Continues to maintain and search for new methods of increasing productivity and quality in a cost-effective manner.
• Coordinate with the Groundwater Conservation Districts (GCD) and Groundwater Subsidence Districts (GSD) to ensure that permitted withdrawal limits are met and manage internal resources toward the same.
• Follows Incident Commander system and fills Incident Commander Role for most events.  For significant emergency events initiates enterprise incident command per the National Incident Management System.

Required Experience, Education, Licenses, and Certifications.  

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Engineering or related field and 10 years’ experience required.
• Ideal candidate will have a “C” license in water and/or wastewater.
• Knowledge of Texas Commission on Environmental Quality as well as Public Utility Commission of Texas rules and regulations, public policy, environment, and industry knowledge and can comfortably and confidently discuss issues that relate to this industry.
• Ability to work with regulatory agencies, developers, public, water and wastewater district representatives, contractors and engineers.
• Must have a valid U.S. Driver’s License.

Preferred skills and experience:

• Knowledge of Safe Drinking Water Act is highly desired.
• Proficient in Microsoft Office (Email, Word, Excel, PowerPoint).
• Excellent written and verbal communications skills; communicate effectively (clearly, concisely and professionally) with internal and external customers
• Strong customer service skills
• Ability to work well under pressure.