Strategic Workforce Planning Lead, Abu Dhabi

EHIF; Abu Dhabi; On-site; AED 400,000 - 640,000; Full time

Job summary

Wood in Abu Dhabi, UAE is seeking a Workforce Planning Lead to own and optimize capacity planning across the business. This full-time, office-based role partners with Delivery Leaders to forecast demand, balance utilisation and drive data-driven staffing decisions.

You will develop short-, medium and long-term forecasts, maintain rolling capacity plans, monitor utilisation, and present insights to senior stakeholders to support profitable project delivery and robust governance.

Qualifications

• Must have degree in operations, business, engineering, data/analytics, or related discipline.
• Desirable training/certification in resource planning, workforce analytics, or change management.

Responsibilities

• Lead workforce planning activities across assigned portfolios, disciplines or regions.
• Develop short, medium and long-term workforce forecasts aligned to business demand.
• Maintain rolling capacity plans highlighting resource gaps, surpluses and deployment opportunities.
• Identify workforce risks early and provide mitigation recommendations.
• Partner with Delivery Managers and Business Leaders to understand future workload.
• Translate sales pipeline, secured work and project demand into workforce requirements.
• Monitor workforce capacity and recommend hiring, redeployment, contractor engagement or workshare opportunities.
• Support mobilisation planning for major projects.
• Monitor weekly utilisation performance across assigned portfolios.
• Analyse utilisation trends and recommend actions to improve billability and productivity.
• Support leaders to optimise workforce deployment while balancing employee development and project delivery.
• Provide commentary explaining utilisation movements and future outlook.
• Produce weekly and monthly workforce planning reports from our dashboards.
• Present workforce insights to senior stakeholders using clear recommendations.
• Monitor key workforce planning KPIs including: Utilisation, Forecast accuracy, Resource demand, Capacity risk, Hiring requirements, Skills shortages.
• Ensure reporting accuracy and consistency across all business units.
• Build trusted relationships with Operations Managers, Delivery Leaders, Project Managers and Talent Acquisition.
• Act as the primary workforce planning advisor for allocated business areas.
• Facilitate regular workforce planning meetings and planning reviews.
• Influence workforce decisions through data-driven recommendations.
• Champion workforce planning best practice across the business.
• Coach leaders on workforce planning methodology and utilisation principles.
• Support change initiatives relating to workforce systems, reporting and planning standards.
• Promote a culture of proactive workforce planning rather than reactive staffing.

Skills

Workforce planning

Forecasting & analytics

Stakeholder management

Data visualization

Education

Degree in operations, business, engineering, data/analytics, or related discipline

Tools

Power BI

Excel

Job description

Wood in Abu Dhabi, UAE is seeking a Workforce Planning Lead to own and optimize capacity planning across the business. This full-time, office-based role partners with Delivery Leaders to forecast demand, balance utilisation and drive data-driven staffing decisions.

You will develop short-, medium and long-term forecasts, maintain rolling capacity plans, monitor utilisation, and present insights to senior stakeholders to support profitable project delivery and robust governance.