Planning Functional Lead
Salary: Circa £75,000 pa plus benefits.
Location: Central London
The Planning Functional Lead is responsible for developing and promoting consistent and best practice project planning, creating and fostering a community amongst project and programme planners and project managers to ensure the reliable delivery of projects and their benefits. As functional lead you will act as "professional head" of project and programme planning across TfL.
Key Accountabilities
- As functional lead you will develop and maintain the planning standards, processes and tools within the TfL PPM methodology, developing it in response to external best practice, lessons learnt internally and continuous improvement initiatives
- Ensure project and programme managers understand and adhere to TfL's project planning standards whilst maintaining a highly motivated programme planning community including TfL staff, agency personnel and contractors
- Provide direction and supervision to any Planner / Schedulers in planning and managing complex multi-project programme time schedules to ensure delivery of intended business benefits
- Management of staff: undertaking all relevant line management activities (e.g. performance management and review, attendance management); providing leadership, advice and support to direct reports; develop individuals and staff to establish a highly performing team and therefore the successful delivery of TfL’s performance objectives; ensuring promotion of equality in all people related practices and equal opportunity for all employees, providing an inclusive working environment
Please note that you must apply by using your CV and a covering letter. Please think carefully about the skills, knowledge and experience outlined in the job description and ensure your CV reflects the requirements of the role.
Knowledge
- Hold a recognised Project Management Qualification or equivalent further qualifications in Planning (e.g. PSP)
- Extensive knowledge of the range of planning and scheduling tools and techniques (CPM, PERT, Critical Chain, Product Based Planning, Agile, Event Chain etc) and the principles underpinning them.
- Understanding optimism bias in schedule estimates and approaches to dealing with it
- Good broad understanding of the business and the TfL environment
Skills
- Fully skilled in the application of project planning and scheduling techniques, able to apply principles to implement a workable and effective planning approach
- Good written and oral communications skills
- Strong analytical skills: Ability to assess the robustness of project schedules and the risks to critical path
- Ability to see the wider context, while retaining an eye for the detail
- Influencing skills and ability to build effective working relationships at all levels across the business
Experience
- Experience of project delivery and project management lifecycle
- Experience as project planner / scheduler on a significant programme or project
- Experience of using PPM systems, particularly Primavera
- Experience of conducting project reviews - in particular assessing the robustness of project schedules, progress against plan
Excellent benefits include:
- 30 days holiday plus public and bank holidays
- Final salary pension scheme
- Free Tube travel and travel concessions including discounted Eurostar travel
- Performance Award
- Private medical insurance
If you are shortlisted you will be invited to take part in a face-to-face interview and other assessments
To apply, please visit https://tfl.taleo.net/careersection/external/moresearch.ftl?lang=en and search for "002022"
We aspire to be as diverse as the city we serve, we welcome applications from all sections of the community.