Ben Guest

I am an experienced Senior Director with a range of experience across operational leadership roles within Ovo and Centrica - and a range of key skills well suited to supporting large and growing businesses - focused on delivery through the realisation of the potential of their teams.

• Compelling and inspirational leadership of large, remote & field-based teams, in a landscape of constant and considerable change
• Cultural and operational transformation and incremental performance improvement, through optimisation and innovation
• Consistent delivery of measurable incremental progress in team engagement and leadership capability
• Significant Org Design experience, building flexible Operating models / Org structures and leading challenging headcount reduction programmes
• Effective Goal and vision setting - with repeatable strategies to engage and align teams towards collective objectives and successes

Ovo - Field Services/Operations Director, Head of Field Force

May 2016 - April 2023 (Ovo and Kaluza)

Director of the Ovo Field Services team, ~1000 FTE in 2023, with budget >£100m. Leading safe installation and customer service delivery, across smart metering, EV chargepoint installation, Solar/Battery/ASHP fulfilment

Growing motivated, diverse and inclusive teams - in size, capability and scope, through change and transformation - including building the Ovo Field Force team from 20 to 400, through transformation into Kaluza and back - then integrating with SSE Metering Operations (through Covid, lockdown, furlough etc), into one team of >1500 with strong, united and aligned culture, identity and performance

Leading a skills and capability transformation - diversifying from traditional and smart metering; cross-skilling engineers capability to install EV, Solar/Battery, and Heat pumps, (the way you would be proud to do it) - building technical and leadership capability to pioneer and drive the net zero carbon installation agenda

Sponsoring and driving cross functional delivery projects to consolidate technology and deliver efficient and effective tools for front line and support teams; specifically as business sponsor for the successful programme replacing and implementing Ovo//SSE legacy metering systems, with self designed and built field services management software

Centrica - Head of Smart Operations/Continuous Improvement, District Smart Energy Manager, National Field Sales Manager

Sep 1999 - May 2016

Part of the first 10 Operational leaders to join British Gas Smart Metering (BGSM) in 2010, pre the October go-live - with responsibility for building working processes, people policies, engineer and leadership recruitment - and setting a unique and positive culture for success in a newly created business unit

As Head of Operations, leading a team of >1000 Smart Energy Engineers, Managers and District Managers in the delivery of safe installation, exemplary customer service and “cross-selling” growth opportunities

As Head of Continuous Improvement, leading Change Programmes which develop and improve operational efficiency (i.e. productivity / completion rate), and leading business change projects such as business closures, reward system design and implementation - and operational / geographical business design

Led the Field Sales team as National Sales Manager for the South. Leading ~400 sales advisors and leadership structure to volume and compliance targets

University of Wales, Cardiff

Plymstock Comprehensive School, Plymouth - 3 A levels, (B-C), 10 GCSE (A* - B)