Duties

The Executive Director, Healthcare Engineering & Facilities Programs (HEFP), serves as the principal advisor and assistant to the Assistant Under Secretary for Health for Support (AUSH-S).

Provides oversight of VHA engineering and facilities programs and management of VHA healthcare engineering and facilities program offices, including the Offices of Capital Asset Management, Healthcare Engineering, Occupational Safety and Health, Environmental Program Services, Enterprise Support Services, and Special Engineering Programs.

This position is involved with the design or renovation of healthcare facilities to enhance the patient experience and address access to care. This position is an emergency essential position.

The incumbent brings significant technical experience in the areas of Planning, Design, Construction, and Operations & Maintenance leadership and program management of healthcare infrastructure, coupled with an overarching understanding of the healthcare environment of care. They provide oversight of program operations, define and prioritize strategy, and lead teams who provide oversight for and/or execute VHA healthcare engineering and facilities programs.

Oversight and direction is provided for planning, designing, and constructing all minor construction projects less than $10 million, all non-recurring maintenance and leasing. Through the minor construction program, HEFP delivers to Veterans, high quality healthcare buildings, additions, large scale renovations, and structural enhancements. HEFP also manages facility sustainability, seismic corrections, physical security, and historic preservation of VHA's facilities.

The Executive Director, Healthcare Engineering & Facilities Programs (HEFP) reports to the Assistant Under Secretary for Health (AUSH) for Support. The responsibilities include, but are not limited to the following:

Management and oversight includes direct support to the Under Secretary for Health (USH), Deputy USH, seven Assistant Under Secretaries for Health, 18 VHA Healthcare Network leadership teams and 172 Healthcare Facility leadership teams to ensure active facility support and oversight, as well as development, execution and improvement of enterprise processes in support of all customers.

Provides oversight of field operations, defines and prioritizes strategy, and leads a team who provide oversight for and/or execute VHA healthcare engineering and facilities programs.

The incumbent is focused on service delivery to provide customer satisfaction and best value in an environment in which risks abound. This requires combining many hard issues covering the physical aspects and condition of the built environment with soft issues relating to healthcare providers, support staff, patients and visitors and their well-being, and encompasses multiple disciplines to ensure functionality of the built environment by integrating people, place, process and technology.

Provides oversight and management for acquisition support programs to meet aggressive cost, schedule and technical objectives as they relate to providing VA facilities, and manages teams of engineers, occupational safety and health professionals, and others focused on ways to facilitate rapid establishment of agile forces composed to provide evolutionary, high-quality, cutting-edge delivery, operations and maintenance of facilities to serve the Veterans patients of the largest integrated healthcare system in the US.

Requirements

Conditions of Employment

• US citizenship is required.
• One year probationary period required for initial SES appointment.
• Males born after 12-31-59 must be registered for Selective Service.
• Incumbents of this position will be subject to a background investigation commensurate with the risk and sensitivity level of the position.
• Successful completion of drug screening required.
• Public Financial Disclosure Report (SF-278) is required within 30 days of appointment.
• May be subject to reassignment geographically or organizationally.
• COVID-19 Vaccination Requirement as required by Executive Order 14043, for further details, refer to additional information below.

Qualifications

The incumbent must meet the qualifications for General engineer (801) and hold an undergraduate or master's degree and have construction management experience.

Pleas access links below for qualification requirements:

801 Requirements
https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/classification-qualifications/general-schedule-qualification-standards/0800/files/all-professional-engineering-positions-0800.pdf

Copy of transcripts are required.

In addition, to meet the minimum qualifications, applicants must possess the following technical and executive core qualifications. These qualifications would typically be gained through progressively responsible management or executive level assignments such as director of a regional office, medical facility or program manager. An individual's total experience, education and volunteer work experience must demonstrate the ability to perform the duties of the position.

Experience refers to paid and unpaid experience, including volunteer work done through National Service programs (e.g. Peace Corps, AmeriCorps) and other organizations (e.g., professional; philanthropic; religious; spiritual; community, student, social). Volunteer work helps build critical competencies, knowledge, and skills and can provide valuable training and experience that translates directly to paid employment. You will receive credit for all qualifying experience, including volunteer experience.

MANDATORY EXECUTIVE CORE QUALIFICATIONS (ECQs): All applicants must submit a written narrative response to each of the following ECQs and include your name on each page. Your narrative must address each ECQ separately. Additional information on ECQs is available at: http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/senior-executive-service/executive-core-qualifications/ . Applicants are encouraged to follow the Challenge, Context, Action and Results model outlined in the guide. It is recommended that you draft your ECQs in a Word document and then upload into the system.

1. Leading Change: The ability to bring about strategic change, both within and outside the organization, to meet organizational goals. Inherent to this ECQ is the ability to establish an organizational vision and to implement it in a continuously changing environment.

2. Leading People: The ability to lead people toward meeting the organization's vision, mission, and goals. Inherent to this ECQ is the ability to provide an inclusive workplace that fosters the development of others, facilitates cooperation and teamwork, and supports constructive resolution of conflicts.

3. Results Driven: The ability to meet organizational goals and customer expectations. Inherent to this ECQ is the ability to make decisions that produce high-quality results by applying technical knowledge, analyzing problems, and calculating risks.

4. Business Acumen: The ability to manage human, financial and information resources strategically.

5. Building Coalitions: The ability to build coalitions internally and with other Federal agencies, state and local governments, nonprofit and private sector organizations, foreign governments, or international organizations to achieve common goals.

TECHNICAL QUALIFICATION (TQ)s: In addition, all applicants must submit a written narrative response to the following specific TQ(s). Please label and include your name on each page. Please give examples and explain how often you used your skills, the complexity of the knowledge possessed, the level of people you interacted with, the sensitivity of the issues you handled managing a large public or private sector organization that administers complex, rules-based benefits or services, etc. It is recommended that you draft your TQ(s) in a word document and then upload into the system.

TQ1: Knowledge of administrative and clinical operations and requirements of construction management, engineering, and the environment of care within a healthcare delivery system.

TQ2: Demonstrated knowledge and experience in managing the planning, design, construction,
and facilities operations, including infrastructure of an agency's major construction and
leasing program.

Education

This position has a positive education requirement. To be eligible, you must clearly state in your resume the following: degree, major and/or minor, and college/university AND submit a copy of your transcripts.

Applicants for the Professional Engineering Series must meet the following basic education requirements of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Qualifications Standards Manual:

Successful completion of a professional engineering degree. To be acceptable, the program must: (1) lead to a bachelor's degree (or higher) in a school of engineering with at least one program accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET); or (2) include differential and integral calculus and courses (more advanced than first-year physics and chemistry) in five of the following seven areas of engineering science or physics: (a) statics, dynamics; (b) strength of materials (stress-strain relationships); (c) fluid mechanics, hydraulics; (d) thermodynamics; (e) electrical fields and circuits; (f) nature and properties of materials (relating particle and aggregate structure to properties); and (g) any other comparable area of fundamental engineering science or physics, such as optics, heat transfer, soil mechanics, or electronics. Such education must demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to do the work of the position.
OR
Current registration as an Engineer Intern (EI), Engineer in Training (EIT), or licensure as a Professional Engineer (PE) by any State, the District of Columbia, Guam, or Puerto Rico. Absent other means of qualifying under this standard, those applicants who achieved such registration by means other than written test (e.g., State grandfather or eminence provisions) are eligible only for positions that are within or closely related to the specialty field of their registration For more information about EI and EIT registration requirements, please visit the National Society of Professional Engineers website at: http://www.nspe.org
OR
Evidence of having successfully passed the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) examination or any other written test required for professional registration by an engineering licensure board in the various States, the District of Columbia, Guam, and Puerto Rico The FE examination is not administered by the U. S. Office of Personnel Management. For more information, please visit: http://www.nspe.org/Licensure/HowtoGetLicensed/index.html.
OR
Successful completion of at least 60 semester hours of courses in the physical, mathematical, and engineering sciences and in engineering that included the courses specified in the basic requirements above. The courses must be fully acceptable toward meeting the requirements of an engineering program as described above.
OR
Successful completion of a curriculum leading to a bachelor's degree in an appropriate scientific field, e.g., engineering technology, physics, chemistry, architecture, computer science, mathematics, hydrology, or geology, may be accepted in lieu of a bachelor's degree in engineering, provided the applicant has had at least one year of professional engineering experience acquired under professional engineering supervision and guidance. Ordinarily, there should be either an established plan of intensive training to develop professional engineering competence, or several years of prior professional engineering-type experience, e.g., in interdisciplinary positions.

Additional information

COVID 19: Federal employees are required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as required by Executive Order 14043 , regardless of the employee's duty location or work arrangement (e.g., telework, remote work, etc.), subject to such exceptions as required by law.

If selected, you will be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and submit documentation of proof of vaccination by November 22, 2021 or before appointment or onboarding with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), if after November 22, 2021.

VA will provide additional information regarding what information or documentation is needed and how you can request a legally required exception from this requirement. Please contact the Human Resources Point of Contact listed at the top of the JOA.

Due to COVID-19, the VA is currently in an expanded telework posture. If selected, you may be expected to temporarily telework, even if your home is located outside the local commuting area. Once employees are permitted to return to the office, you will be expected to report to the duty station listed on this announcement. At that time, you may be eligible to request to continue to telework depending upon the terms of your organization's telework policy and the duties of the position.

Veteran Preference does not apply to the Senior Executive Service.: https://www.opm.gov/faqs/topic/Senior-Executive-Service/index.aspx .

Drug Testing: All applicants tentatively selected for VA Senior Executive Service employment in any position are subject to urinalysis to screen for illegal drug use prior to appointment. Applicants who refuse to be tested will be denied employment with VA.

Incumbents of this position will be subject to a background investigation commensurate with the risk and sensitivity level of the position.