Working Relationships

1. Being a team member of the Unified Communications Team, the post-holder has both a group and individual responsibility for defined aspects of the service and will ensure that their contribution is both positive and beneficial in helping both the Estates and Facilities Directorate and other departments within the Trust, to fulfill the Trust’s overall objectives.

Duties and Responsibilities

2. The post-holder will contribute to the work of the Unified Communications Service Desk with the guidance of the Service Desk Manager and other colleagues, to ensure that all services meet agreed standards and a patient centred approach. The post-holder carries a personal responsibility to plan their time, in collaboration with the Service Desk Manager, to ensure they complete allocated tasks within agreed timescales and within the constraints of the Trust’s Standing Financial Instructions, and to represent the department, division or service in meetings as and when required.

General Duties

3. The post holder will be expected to undertake first line technical support for the Unified Communications Team, this includes all of the services and related systems provided by the team on site. This could include, but is not limited to: support of telephony, paging, radios, IT applications and desktop support. Specifically, the Network Engineer will be expected to provide a front-line service desk service to users, which includes responding to phone calls, email or walk ins, and creating tickets to track work to completion. This requires the ability to understand complex technical issues, effectively gauge the response required and the clinical and administrative needs and resources of staff and departments at all levels and from all disciplines, in order to offer the best advice and resolution for each service requirement.

4. The post holder will be expected to assist with the development of corporate strategies across the Trust in relation to Unified Communications, such as standardisation of service delivery, rollout programs for new technologies and customer service strategies to meet patient and clinical expectations.

5. Deputise for the Service Desk Manager as and when required, to ensure the needs of the business are met. This could include attending meetings, liaising with suppliers, co-ordinating activities or escalating faults amongst other things.

6. Meet Trust personnel to discuss their requirements and gather the necessary information to create works orders or log faults for a variety of contractors including the current trust IT provider. Coordinate and track works orders and faults on behalf of the customer ensuring that the work has been carried out to the necessary standard.

7. Create and maintain records needed to ensure the efficiency, safety, and cost-effectiveness of all services, to enable quick and reliable searches to be made, and reports to be produced. Careful recording and maintenance of information received, and accurate updating of information via the relevant means.

8. Liaise with service providers to ensure external faults affecting local services are quickly dealt with and resolved, and escalate first line faults to external providers as required, retaining responsibility for progress and updating customers throughout.

9. The post-holder must demonstrate excellent communication, negotiation, and interpersonal skills in all contacts with staff, contractors, patients, and visitors, in respect of cultural and language difficulties, whether communicating verbally, in writing, or by electronic means. It is expected that the Network Engineer is able to represent the department to colleagues.

10. To manage and negotiate supplier contracts with the support of the Service Desk Manager and supervise contractors to ensure that work meets the required quality and timeframes.

11. To meet existing and future Trust needs for effective, resilient, and cost effective services. To be the point of contact for technical support for Trust staff, suppliers, and maintainers for enquiries relating to the use of existing solutions and equipment, and to ensure that proper disaster recovery plans and business continuity plans are put in place and tested.

Operational Responsibilities

12. The post-holder will provide routine maintenance of all equipment and applications as required including patch and version control, upgrades, troubleshooting of infrastructure faults on physical equipment or medium as/when required. This may require out of hours working to minimise impact to the Trust. Replacement of faulty equipment to ensure maximum uptime of central systems and installation and configuration of new devices as needed. Providing administration of centralized data backup facilities and restoration to live systems.

13. It is expected that the Network Engineer maintains their skill set across all equipment and services provided to the trust, and takes a personal responsibility to access learning opportunities as they arise, e.g. job shadowing, training etc. This will also include designing and delivering training and supporting documentation as appropriate for products or services which the role-holder has knowledge of.

14. The post-holder should be acquainted with general technological developments in the area of Unified Communications systems and related technologies, on matters which may affect or be beneficial to the area of work for which he/she is responsible and will monitor and actively manage the hardware, software and devices to diagnose potential problems before they occur.

15. The post-holder will be responsible for researching and understanding such technology with the support of the technical team, and how such technology can be best implemented for the Trust. They will also need to be skilled at disseminating the information to colleagues.

16. Produce ad-hoc reports to provide information required for the investigation of complaints, significant events and other enquiries, and to assist department managers with planning proposed changes.

17. Take responsibility for delivery of the service, including the production, presentation and analysis of management information reports and be able to interpret the data in order to make suggestions about improvement to service.

18. The post-holder will ensure correct data input and use appropriate methodologies when carrying out technical programming and be responsible for maintaining correct working of existing equipment, diagnose and arrange repair of faults as well as plan, design and deliver application deployments.

19. The post-holder will be required to undertake programming of operationally critical and highly sensitive equipment, and so must be able to concentrate for varying lengths of time in varying locations to ensure accurate and consistent work is carried out and documented appropriately.

20. Act as second line support for any faults requiring expertise at that level.

Project Responsibilities

21. The post-holder will maintain full and complete electronic records, of all projects for which the post-holder is personally responsible. Such project records will include project briefs, project initiation documents and briefing notes.

22. The post-holder will carry personal responsibility to supervise, design, deliver and control designated projects that they are allocated to work on and must ensure they comply with the agreed brief and meet stated requirements of quality, programme and financial allocation for that project. The post-holder will have to interact with departments during the planning and commissioning of work to ensure that requirements are fully met.

23. The post-holder will maintain effective communications with other members of the team and with other departments within the Trust. The post holder will be expected to deal with sometimes complex, sensitive, and often contentious issues when delivering Unified Communications projects.

24. Some projects will require the post holder to take on an active role within a clinical environment especially at the time of implementation and delivery within a specific area/department; this involves working around and interacting with clinical teams and/or patients to explain why changes to the service are occurring. The post holder must be able to show empathy and understanding when explaining a technical issue to a client to ensure that their needs are completely understood and properly met