Oliver James Richards Email & Phone Number

Balsall Common, Gb

Coventry, England, United Kingdom

Placement three of the Severn Trent Business Leadership Graduate Programme, as a Strategic Asset Analyst in Chief Engineer. I have three main objectives in this role. The first is to develop a business case greater use of third-party funding at Severn Trent. There’s a clear regulatory expectation to move in this direction, and I’m working on developing a robust approach to meeting this expectation.The second has been to defend Severn Trent’s PR24 Business Plan during the Ofwat Draft Determination period in July and August 2024. My focus was defending our Alternative Supplies Enhancement Case, which was secured in full. I received excellent feedback for the work I did to demystify Ofwat’s approach to assessing our case. I also supported the defence of Urban Catchments Business Case, and benchmarked this aspect of our plan against the wider industry. Lastly, I’ve been supporting the Warwickshire Avon Catchment Based Approach Partnership (WACaBA), who work to improve the health and resilience of the Warwickshire Avon. This involves identifying improvement strategies to help WACaBA function more effectively with limited resources, and building the case to expand their resource to deliver broader environmental benefit. Key Achievements: I’ve only been in role for a few months, and we won’t find out the result of Ofwat’s PR24 Final Determination until December. I’ve made strong progress in all workstreams, and I’m on track to deliver on all objectives by the end of this placement, which is also in December.

Coventry, England, United Kingdom

Placement two of the Severn Trent Business Leadership Graduate Programme, as a Marketing and Campaigns Lead at Severn Trent Services.It was a joy to return to a team that I played a part in forming, and tackling higher level projects.During this role I integrated systems to ensure that the ever-expanding team was able to deliver complex and targeted marketing campaigns efficiently, without sacrificing creative zeal. We brought in Monday.com and various to streamline workflow, and very nearly integrated HubSpot, before deciding that the product wasn’t quite right for us commercially at that time. I also dove back into the world of branding, examining the brand architecture of our portfolio of businesses, and proposing improvements. As part of this process I introduced the business to customer journey mapping, and demonstrated the power of understanding who our customers are, and why they make purchasing decisions. Lastly, I upskilled our team, ensuring they had strong copywriting, design and video editing skills to continue succeeding without me. Key Achievements: Doubled the rate of growth of our LinkedIn pages, upskilled our team and introduced new ways of working to drive efficiency, and launched a new internal communications strategy that boosted Quest scores.

Birmingham, England, United Kingdom

Placement one of the Severn Trent Business Leadership Graduate Programme, as an Improvement Manager in Bioresources.This was within Interworks Logistics, a part of Severn Trent that transports waste from smaller to larger sewage treatment works to be processed into renewable energy. I was responsible for analysing performance and identifying improvement strategies, and managing projects to transform and modernise our ways of working. As a result, I worked to implement cutting edge logistics technology, improve lines of communications between management/office/field, and ultimately elevate the culture of the Interworks Logistics. I also managed a team of Logistics Controllers in the latter half of the placement, ensuring performance was maintained and the team remained happy and engaged.Key Achievements: Won a Gold Awesome Award at the Severn Trent Awesome Awards in the Goal Zero (health and safety) category for a gamified safe driving competition I developed. Implemented a system to ensure there was no 'sludge incident' in 2022, for the first time in many years. These projects continue to pay dividends to this day.

Coventry, England, United Kingdom

A full-time role digital marketing role with the Water Hygiene business within Severn Trent Services, the commercial arm of Severn Trent. I was responsible for managing social media channels and our website, producing copy, video, graphics and photography for all internal and external comms. I also produced engaging live sales and training events for customers to attend. During this role I redesigned the website to drive revenue. I also launched a new product offering, which I successfully marketed with intuitive and compelling video content. I also rebranded the business to Aqualytix. Premium products need premium brands, so I worked with a team of marketing strategists and industry experts to create a brand that communicated our commitment to outstanding quality and service. I designed the Aqualytix logo, and produced most of the launch collateral and LinkedIn/web content. I was supported by my successor in this role for the final stretch, and managed to deliver the rebrand and handover on a very tight timeline leading up to begging the Business Leadership Graduate Programme in September 2022. Key Achievements: Delivered the rebrand to Aqualytix, grew our social media follower count by 5x and impressions by 10x in a year, launched a new product type and drove significant revenue through effective marketing.

Coventry, England, United Kingdom

A six month placement with the Water Hygiene business within Severn Trent Services, the commercial arm of Severn Trent. I massively exceeded expectations in this role, and was offered a full Marketing Assistant role shortly after joining.I was responsible for managing social media channels and our website, producing copy, video, graphics and photography for all internal and external comms.Key Achievements: Produced a lead-generating content flywheel using LinkedIn and our website from scratch, gaining thousands of followers, tens and thousands of impressions and converting high-value leads. Justified a full-time role, which has since expanded into an entire department at Severn Trent Services.

Coventry, England, United Kingdom

Updating data repositories, processing existing data, and assisting the acquisition of new insights for Warwick Business School.

Birmingham, England, United Kingdom

Egham, England, United Kingdom

Msc Computer Science, Merit

Activities and Societies: Meditation SocietyLearned Java, SQL, Swift, R and others. Learned the theory of computing and software.

Bachelor Of Arts - Ba, Film, Television And Digital Production, 2:1

Activities and Societies: Japan Society Athletics Society Founder's Dining HallStudied film and film production. Learned how to research.