Programme Lead

Cornerstone; Theale; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

Cornerstone is seeking a senior Programme Lead to direct and manage a multi-disciplinary team delivering critical power improvement works across sites. You will ensure electrical compliance, data integrity and timely delivery within agreed parameters, while interfacing with leadership and major partners.

You will shape delivery through robust governance, proactive risk management and cross-functional collaboration to align with Cornerstone's strategic objectives and regulatory obligations.

Qualifications

• Significant experience in leading programmes and driving delivery
• Proven ability to manage stakeholder relationships at senior levels
• Experience in defining governance and controls for complex projects
• Strong track record of data-driven reporting and risk management
• Ability to coach and mentor teams in large-scale transformations

Responsibilities

• Lead and manage multi-disciplinary teams to deliver power improvement works
• Drive programme governance, risk, and change control for estate projects
• Collaborate with internal and external partners to ensure alignment with strategy
• Develop and maintain dashboards and real-time reporting for SLT and board
• Oversee data capture, validation and reporting to demonstrate delivery health

Skills

Programme delivery

Stakeholder management

Governance

Data assurance

Change management

Leadership

Education

Prince2

MSP

PMI

SAFe Agile

Tools

MS Project

Excel

Job description

The primary focus is to lead and manage a team responsible for delivering the required power improvement works and ensuring each site is electrically certified and evidence is recorded within agreed delivery parameters. This project will contribute to Cornerstone fulfilling its obligations under the Construction Design & Management Regulations (2015) and the Building Safety Act (2022), thus providing safe access to our sites.

The role-holder will ideally have an electrical background and have demonstrated expertise in managing programs and processes, with a history of overseeing and delivering transformational projects at a site level.

The role will require close collaboration with a broad range of multi-disciplinary stakeholders, including Cornerstone Engineering and Electrical Design, to develop a deep understanding of complex electrical delivery solutions and, where required, associated design and upgrade works. A key element of managing this phased programme is the systematic collection, review and validation of critical data and information. This includes ensuring records are accurate, current and aligned, and correlating findings to create a clear, comprehensive view of programme progress, risks and outcomes.

The role holder will influence partner behaviours, drive business-wide process improvements, and implement solutions that ensure electrical compliance is consistently reviewed, accurately recorded and effectively assured. This will support the resolution of the current business challenge by providing a robust understanding of estate health, risk position and compliance status.

In addition, the role acts as a direct interface with the Senior Leadership team and Board, helping to support the organisation's strategic objectives and manage the corporate risks associated with estate integrity, compliance and data assurance.

Stakeholder Management

• Drive multiple suppliers to meet their targets by delivering against a rigid plan against a strict objective and corporate risk.
• Cultivate and strengthen relationships with all, ensuring effective collaboration and communication and drive results.
• Support and influence the need for strong interworking and connections between site delivery and digital site environment collection.
• Promote and deliver the smooth transition of information from site to the digital environment in the most efficient time period possible and ensure it is usable for all.
• Ability to handle conflict and drive issue resolution. Managing conflict in a constructive way.
• Act as key interface for the programme, facing into the team, customer and partners
• Proactively working with the partners on transformation and improvements.
• Ensure coherent and optimised set of baseline delivery plans against the strategy with an effective and strictly controlled change control process.
• Working with key internal stakeholders to ensure full end to end process is optimal and efficient.

Programme Delivery

• To deliver and maintain the strategy for Power Works against the objectives and corporate risk.
• To manage the impact of change within the project and on the project plans in terms of scope, timescales, costs & quality ensuring that the impacts are clearly understood and sanctioned by key stakeholders.
• Accountable for the delivery of the assigned programme- providing strategic context, direction and leadership to the team. ensuring outcomes are achieved with end-to-end accountability for delivery of the changes.
• Monitor programme delivery plan, resource deployment and overall co-ordination to deliver quality outcomes, on time, within budget, and following the agreed fulfilment process.
• Ability to create and communicate the vision of the programme and drive the key outcomes and results.
• Ability to step up to cover for Head of operations absence and generally lead in partner meetings/ SLT and transformation.
• Define, prioritise and achieve strategic objectives of the programme- accountability for benefits realisation.
• Interrogate live dashboard data to drive action and decisions around risks and issues.
• To produce suitable updates to provide confidence and clarity that targets are being met or clearly mitigated
• Leads governance and exec meetings with energy and drive, empowered to direct the programme and take decisions.
• Ability to prioritise work stack to optimise the benefits and commercial viability for Cornerstone.
• Drive process improvements to increase delivery productivity without compromising quality and ensure all stakeholders can use the information collected.

Governance & Control

• To establish and provide clear and effective project governance by appropriate use of industry standard tools, and mediums such as meetings, one to ones and conference calls to regularly govern the project issues.
• To proactively surface, record and manage all project risks, issues and dependencies, subsequently managing their mitigation and resolutions escalating as required to ensure the project remains on track.
• Deliver a digital environment that all can use that is controlled so data is always governed and up to date.

Reporting

• To enable and deliver real time reporting of the delivery programme.
• Create and deliver a flight path and deliver of sites and data to that path.
• Report into the SLT and board at a minimum monthly level face to face along with weekly and monthly delivery written reports.
• Manage to budget and report against the budget. Over see any rectification works and work in conjunction and report to the HSQE department of significant trends and findings.

Compliance & Security

• To support and contribute actively to health and safety, environmental, business continuity and information security arrangements that meet our obligations to our customers.

Experience

• Significant experience of leading programmes
• Ability to drive cultural change and mindset shift within the organisation
• Practical experience in senior positions of the definition, resourcing and execution of [strategic] programs
• Detailed experience of preparing project and program baselines and underlying detailed plans
• Practical experience of setting up and running real-time reporting and delivery management systems for major programs
• Experience of financial management (cost and benefits) in complex programs
• Familiarity with program management professional standards such as Prince 2 or MSP
• Prince 2/MSP/PMI/ SAFe Agile or similar

Education Level

• 5+years of experience in delivery and supplier management
• High EQ associated with influencing and stakeholder management skills at varying levels and across matrix organisations
• Proven coaching and mentoring experience
• Excellent presentation skills including the ability to write reports/analytical skills.
• Clear & concise communication skills within Cornerstone and externally with 3rd party suppliers & stakeholders
• Strong planning & organisational ability in delivering business results.

Skills

• A good relationship builder and ability to build trust through effective management of internal and external stakeholders.
• Clear and concise communication skills at all levels of the business
• Strong planning and organizational skills, Ability to prepare plans and anticipate change.
• Focused on single mindedness and diligence in delivering business outcomes.
• Intermediate skills in Excel and MS Project