Assistant Project Manager jobs in United Kingdom

Project description

One of the biggest UK rail network companies operating with rail infrastructure and asset management has a need to develop and support enterprise-level information systems. We are looking for a candidate to manage projects through the entire project life cycle, whilst applying the fundamentals of good project management, e.g., safety, schedule, risk, and financial management etc. The Projects involve delivering various Telecom Operations Systems projects, including essential software upgrades on critical telecoms operational support systems (OSS) used for fault detection, investigation, and resolution by telecoms teams. These upgrades are essential because they are primarily driven by software vendors’ discontinuing support on older versions of their software. The remaining upgrades are enhancements to make fault management processes more efficient or to reduce fault reaction times. Example key applications include IBM API Gateway, IBM Control desk (SCCD), IBM Netcool, Cramer and SolarWinds. The services shall need to deliver outputs required by organizational Standards (in-house delivery framework).

Responsibilities

• Project Delivery
• Take accountability and responsibility for the delivery of a number of projects under the direction of the Programme Manager to deliver high-quality products, right first time and within timescale and budget and to a high level of quality.
• Form project teams consisting of the required specialists so that pragmatic and supportable solutions are delivered to our clients following organizational standards.
• Take responsibility for delivering return on investment associated with the benefits case and technical compliance, involving the appropriate Project Commercial Manager as required.
• Deploy effective risk and issue management, and change control processes in line with company project management standards.
• Create project plans, identify the critical path, baseline the plans and track against the baselined plan at an appropriate frequency so that issues are identified and managed prior to affecting the critical path. This shall include effective management of dependencies with other projects or suppliers.
• Escalate issues to the Programme Manager or appropriate Commercial Manager in a timely manner, including contractual issues with suppliers.
• Stakeholder Management
• Build and maintain relationships with business representatives and stakeholders so that expectations are managed, and requirements are benefits driven. The Supplier also acts as the primary point of contact for the project or subproject and works closely with the client to manage issues and concerns.
• Regularly update sponsors and stakeholders on the progress of the project with clear, appropriate, and timely communications.
• Supplier Management
• Take end-to-end accountability for the management of all suppliers and other third parties in terms of their deliverables to the project.
• Work with the Contracts & Procurement team to check that contracts and other formal documents are appropriate in terms of the allocation of risk and responsibility so that the company does not duplicate supplier responsibilities while protecting against supplier failure.
• Manage suppliers so that they deliver to time and budget and manage the process of dealing with supplier issued Change Requests. You’ll take advanced action to mitigate risks.
• Establish firm and trusted relationships with suppliers so that non-contractual issues can be resolved quickly and amicably with the minimum of overhead.
• Financial Management
• Manage project finances as required by organization standards, including accurate and informed forecasting, authorization of payment only on delivery, and accurate reporting of the project status and current financial position. Take appropriate and timely action where financial measures deviate from agreed tolerances.
• Manage changes to the deliverables or financials declared within the Investment Paper through the formal change control procedure.
• Demonstrate to the Leadership and Financial teams that project costs are traceable to the project plan.
• Reporting
• Produce Weekly reports, which shall as a minimum include:
• Weekly successes (against plan, incl. commentary on variances).
• Plan for next week.
• Issues or risks opened, progressed, or closed in the week, incl. Interfaces, critical items, and current and potential problems.
• Up-to-date action log.
• A health status for key project milestones.
• Produce 4-weekly reports, which shall as a minimum include:
• Project Status Report.
• Project Plan, incl. providing a summary of the critical path, and a schedule variance analysis, against the baseline in the Investment Paper and any variance in the period.
• Up-to-date Risk Register.
• Up-to-date Issues Register.
• Accurate finance forecasts and Cost of Work Done (COWD) for the Project(s), incl. PM, PE services contract(s), the delivery Works Contractor contracts and other internal/external Project workstreams.
• Commercial report (incl. contract change log, PO status and invoicing status) for PM, PE services contract(s), the delivery Works contractor contracts, and any other Project contracts.
• Maintain all documents produced for the project, e.g. As-builts, design documents, testing documents, TQs etc under the project folder within the SharePoint site for the Business Tools Programme. All documents should include key parameters, e.g., author, date produced/approved, and document status etc.

SKILLS

Must have

• Extensive experience in delivering projects in a project management capacity where the PM’s were directly responsible for all aspects of time, cost and quality.
• A proven track record of delivering multi‐million-pound telecoms application upgrade projects.
• A practical understanding of PACE, CSM and CDM.
• Demonstrable experience of delivering single projects from inception through to operational handover and project closure.
• Accredited by a professional project management body (eg. APMP, Prince 2, MSP).
• Excellent interpersonal, management and communication skills.
• Excellent knowledge of programme and project controls processes and systems.
• Strong supplier management skills.
• Excellent understanding of business and investment case development.
• Proven experience in managing and developing teams to achieve high performance.
• Proven ability to work with senior industry stakeholders to understand their Requirements.
• Good Knowledge of Railway Telecoms Network, systems and capability.
• Excellent leadership, communication and commercial skills and extensive experience in delivering large, complex delivery projects.

Nice to have

• Experience in Project Management of major software upgrades or application migrations.
• Experience in Project Management in Government/Public bodies.
• Some experience working on the following key applications: Transmission network alarm systems (SolarWinds and Netcool), Trouble ticketing system (SCCD Control Desk), Telecoms asset and service inventory system (Cramer), OSS Application Integration system (API Gateway) and automation tools (Resolve).