Built Environment Forum Scotland (BEFS) seeks to appoint a Communications Officer.

About BEFS

Built Environment Forum Scotland (BEFS) is the strategic intermediary body for Scotland’s built environment sector, bringing together civic, voluntary, and professional organisations that operate at the national level. As an umbrella organisation, BEFS informs, debates and advocates on strategic issues and policies affecting the built environment. Our aim is to communicate the importance of Scotland’s built and historic environment to policy makers at all levels of government, private owners and investors, and amongst professionals and voluntary organisations. BEFS are core-funded via Historic Environment Scotland. Funding is in place until 31 March 2028.

The role

Leading on the communication activities of the organisation, BEFS Communications Officer will work closely with BEFS team to strategically amplify the sector’s policy interests and ensure that BEFS role as a trusted and informed sector voice is reflected visibly across all our communications channels.

Working closely with the Board, Director, and team - as well as communicating with our Member organisations - the post holder will be responsible for managing the breadth of the organisation’s (digital) communications channels. Adopting a proactive cross-sectoral approach, the postholder will play a key role in maintaining and raising BEFS profile with policy makers, the sector and wider stakeholders.

We are seeking the right individual - with an excellent turn of phrase, and an eye for detail - to fit into a small, friendly team.

Key responsibilities include:

• Lead on drafting and publishing BEFS bi-monthly bulletin
• Managing and developing BEFS digital communications, including the website, social media and digital engagement platforms
• Horizon scanning: Monitor, amplify and engage with our Members’ communications and social media output
• Provide a consistent and informed voice for BEFS communications outputs across all channels;
• Proactively maintain an outcome-led communications strategy consistent with BEFS organisational objectives and strategies (e.g. BEFS Manifesto)
• Ensuring the delivery of BEFS communications strategy enhances outputs; manage, monitor and report on the effectiveness of the communications strategy, including media relations
• Work with BEFS team to develop advocacy and communication toolkits supporting sector advocacy and climate advocacy specifically
• Work with BEFS team to proactively support the Membership through advocacy work on behalf of sector-wide and Member initiatives, including production of new advocacy documents
• Support BEFS team to develop advocacy campaigns and facilitating events
• Reporting: provide and contribute to regular reports to funders and BEFS Board;
• Team: participate actively as part of a small and agile team, supporting and working with colleagues as necessary
• Undertaking other such duties as may be required

Person specification

Applicants should be confident communicators with strong written and inter-personal skills, and proven experience of using a wide range of (digital) communication methods including websites, social media, news releases, and press liaison.

Applicants should be able to demonstrate an understanding of the key issues affecting the existing and historic environment, with knowledge of the main players and lead organisations in the wider built environment sector.

This post will suit a communications professional with an interest in Scotland’s existing built environment.

If invited to interview, you will be asked to demonstrate how your experience meets the requirements of the post. We will look for evidence of past experience, and your approach to the key responsibilities outlined above.

JOB PURPOSE

As Scotland’s leading conservation charity, the National Trust for Scotland cares for, shares and speaks up for Scotland’s heritage. Since 1931, we’re pioneered public access to and shared ownership of some of the most magnificent buildings, collections and landscapes in Scotland. We care for ancient houses, battlefields, castles, mills, gardens, coastlines, islands and mountain ranges, as well as the plants, animals and birds that live there.

To share these special places, we hold approximately 50,000 image assets to promote and explain the purpose of the Trust. We are conscious that we do not have a robust digital asset management system to store and manage access rights to these images. These include images of:

• People
• Places – castles, gardens and landscapes
• Conservation in action
• Wildlife and nature

Note: there is an existing database (Portfolio) which holds imagery of collections items (as undertaken in a previous digitisation project).

Currently, these assets are saved across a range of locations: SharePoint, locally on people’s own machines, Flickr, on external hard drives. There are significant risks to the Trust having no coherent storage system:

• Misuse of imagery (contravening IP/copyright information) because we have no way of securely tagging and storing contracts/permissions forms alongside imagery
• Loss of assets (many are currently stored on external hard drives)
• Difficulty of sharing imagery both internally and externally
• Storage costs from duplication of images across personal machines

This immediately affects Content/Marketing, Communications and Fundraising within Audiences & Support. We currently do not have the resource or expertise within the Directorate to initiate this project so are looking for an external expert to develop a plan for how to transition to a DAMs.

The purpose of this role is to assess our current position, auditing our assets and putting in place a robust plan for an intuitive, well-governed asset management system in line with the work already done by the Collections team. We would like to use Portolio, a system already in place in other areas across the Trust, but would like the successful applicant to assess the efficacy of Portfolio, and report on its benefits/issues/whether we can optimise it to work for us, or whether an alternative package should be considered so we can make an informed decision. This will ensure a consist approach to asset management is taken across the Trust.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND ACCOUNTABILITIES

• Audit assets (video, imagery, illustrations) within the Directorate to gauge the scale of the requirements and clarify work required on copyright records.
• Assess the functionality of Portfolio for imagery, including a report on whether any development work is required to ensure it is suitable for the needs of the directorate.
• Build upon the work already done by the Collections Team to develop clear cataloguing standards for the DAMs to improve access and rights management and to ensure that a consistent approach is taken to asset management across the organisation
• Develop a plan for how to transition live imagery to Portfolio, and how to manage the transition of the image backlog.
• Design a plan for the implementation of workflows for good digital asset management including a review and disposal criteria policy and ongoing resource requirements.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS, SKILLS, EXPERIENCE & KNOWLEDGE

Qualifications

Essential

• Strong track record in DAMs management and/or commercial digital image library management

Desirable

• Educated to a degree level in a relevant heritage or information technology subject

Experience

Essential

• Technically knowledgeable, technically experienced person
• Proven experience with Portfolio and other DAMs systems
• Thorough understanding of the cataloguing and meta data protocols for the retrieval and exploitation of digital assets
• Experience of planning and delivering a DAMs audit/approach project
• Ability to work independently
• Experienced and independent self-starter, with the knowledge and confidence to review existing systems
• Excellent knowledge of copyright and other legal compliance issues
• Experience of develop digital management workflows

Desirable

• Experience in a charity, heritage or cultural organisation.