Sensory Project Manager

Location

Wokingham, Berkshire | United Kingdom

Job description

Are you a Sensory professional looking for the next step in your career? Do you have previous experience managing and running sensory panels?

Here at MMR, we are looking for a Sensory Project Manager to join our team in Wokingham.

A bit about the role:

Your role will be to have oversight of the sensory panels activities and manage clients at our UK Sensory Science Centre (SSC) Wokingham facility. The role covers everything from initial briefs with clients, creating proposals, costing, and planning projects, organizing the panel schedule, oversight of data collection and panel performance monitoring and ensuring that panel procedures are compliant with food hygiene standards through to team management, data analysis, report writing, and project debriefs.

The role involves travelling to clients' offices as required with opportunities to travel aboard, for example, training client panels on-site, kick-off meetings with clients, etc.

A bit about us:

MMR is an independent, global consumer and sensory research agency specialising in food, drink, personal and household care research. We are industry leaders, guiding best in class innovation for our clients – partnering with over 50% of the top 100 global food and drink brands.

Our team of over 800 highly engaged, multi-disciplined employees are primarily dynamic research professionals, sensory experts and data scientists. We’re a diverse bunch, with backgrounds in R&D, insight, marketing, sensory science, data sciences and psychology. We also boast a true global reach with offices in Wallingford (near Oxford), London, New York, Shanghai, Singapore, Mumbai, Sao Paulo, Cali (Colombia), Bangkok and Durban.

What makes MMR special?

We are a “people first” company that prides itself on collaboration, honesty and mutual trust. Don’t take our word for it though, check us out on Glassdoor. You’ll see we’re currently rated at 4.8 out of 5 as an employer destination and a massive 97% of our employees would recommend working for us to a friend. Add to that 99% of our people approve of our CEO and you a general feel of what it means to be part of the MMR family.

Key responsibilities – Management:

• To collaborate with the Associate Director to assist in the development of proposals and conduct research for designing solutions that effectively meet the client's objectives within the constraints of time and cost.
• To provide innovative sensory solutions to client’s research problems and requirements, working with the Sensory Associate Director as required:
• This includes being agile in addressing problems as they arise and ensuring that projects are completed on time.
• to ensure that projects generate consistently high-quality descriptive analysis data, outputs and reports for all projects.
• The creation of engaging reports and debriefing reports for clients working with the Sensory Associate Director.
• Responsibility for managing the panel's schedule, timing and costing projects and working with clients to ensure their results are delivered in a timely manner. Having oversight of all sensory projects, ensuring that:
• Weekly/daily team planning meetings are implemented, led by you.
• Project day-to-day client liaison: clients are kept up to date about the progress of research, for example, vocabulary and protocols sent for sign-off, clear dates for meetings and reporting.
• Ensure that all projects comply with the project tick checklist.
• The PCS forms are completed and adhered to, and every project has an up-to-date Project Management File.
• Kick-off, analysis and story-boarding meetings are conducted for every project. Where projects are linked to consumer research, story-boarding meetings with the consumer teams are also conducted.
• Ensuring that the right protocols are being used for each project
• Products arrive on time, are sourced correctly, stored correctly, and prepared correctly.
• Accurate Compusense are created and implemented.
• Ensure that invoices are raised for all sensory projects working through the Sensory Associate Director.
• Leading the panel to cover holidays and Panel Leaders absences
• Be a key contact for clients in dedicated panel contracts
• To plan/organize and run an ongoing training schedule, and outside projects, to develop and enhance the panel's capabilities. All projects comply with food safety and hygiene regulations and that the facility is kept clean and tidy.
• Oversight of the management of the panel’s performance and to ensure that panel feedback occurs on a regular basis:
• To conduct quarterly reviews of the overall performance of the panels to ensure client and MMR KPIs are met.
• To manage any panel technicians and temporary staff ensuring their work is of good quality and meets your needs.
• Organising panellist recruitment and running the screening sessions.
• Training the new panellists to generate robust and repeatable data.
• To work directly with Reading University team members to ensure their research requirements are met without compromising MMR projects.
• To lead interaction with the US Sensory and Consumer teams as one of our sensory experts, and with Global Sensory team for efficient information management and high consistency of sensory operations globally.
• To train the Graduate Panel Leader to enable them to become an efficient and effective Panel Leader; developing their report writing skills, data analysis, client liaison and the use of our data capture system, Compusense

Requirements

Required qualifications and skills

• At least 3 years panel leading or project management experience
• Educated to degree level, preferable in food science or a related field
• Sensory foundation in Sensory Principles (IFST)
• Basic Food Hygiene qualification

  Behavioral

• Communication – should be able to communicate clearly and professionally
• Self management – should be able to switch between tasks according to business needs, coping with changing priorities and keeping the Assistant Panel Leaders and the Sensory Manager informed of possible issues
• Planning and organizing – should be able to prioritize own workload and implement effective administrative processes.
• Working with others – should be able to maintain open and honest relationships colleagues building trust and confidence. Should be able to work independently and as part of a team

Technical

• Computer literate – Is a competent user in Word, Excel and email
• Should be computer literate although training will be given in the relevant software packages
• Attention to detail – should be able to check own work and others’ work for inconsistencies and take the necessary action to rectify any errors/problems
• An aptitude for food preparation with limited supervision needed

Benefits

MMR is an equal opportunities employer.

Job tags

Salary