Senior Planner

Mercury Engineering; Greater London; On-site; GBP 65,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Mercury Engineering in the United Kingdom is seeking an experienced Lead Planner to manage complex construction programmes for data centre and technology projects. You will own the planning lifecycle and drive schedule strategy across the portfolio.

The role requires advanced Primavera P6 skills, strong Earned Value Management knowledge, and the ability to deliver robust baselines, lookahead schedules, and dashboards for senior management.

Qualifications

• Minimum 5+ years’ planning and project controls experience within large-scale construction, engineering, or mission-critical environments, preferably including Data Centre project delivery.
• Strong understanding of the full project lifecycle, from design development, procurement, and construction through to commissioning, handover, and close-out
• Advanced proficiency in Primavera P6, with the ability to develop, update, maintain and analyse detailed project programmes, lookahead schedules, progress updates, and reporting baselines.
• Strong reporting and analytical skills, including the ability to produce clear programme dashboards, lookahead reports, progress narratives, milestone trackers, constraint logs, and risk summaries.

Responsibilities

• Lead planner across a project or portfolio of projects, owning the full planning lifecycle and driving programme strategy as senior planning authority.
• Ensure planning activities comply with internal standards, client specifications, and contract requirements while improving processes, templates and deliverables.
• Develop and maintain schedules for pre-construction, construction and commissioning using Primavera P6, including WBS, activity coding, calendars and logic.
• Monitor schedule health, KPI trends, tool utilisation, and provide feedback on procedures with recommended enhancements.
• Prepare tender schedules and support estimations with deliverable programmes reflecting methodologies, resource strategies, procurement timelines and milestones.
• Support weekly lookahead planning (1-week/3-week/6-week) with site teams to improve plan reliability and execution.

Skills

Planning & scheduling

Primavera P6

Critical path analysis

EVM reporting

Stakeholder engagement

Tools

Primavera P6

Earned Value Management

Job description

Beware of Fraudulent Mercury Job Postings. Fraudsters may be posting fake job listings claiming to be from Mercury. Legitimate Mercury job offers will never ask for personal information or upfront payments. Always verify job postings through official Mercury channels.

Mercury is the European leader in construction solutions.

We build and manage complex engineering & construction projects for the world’s leading corporations. Our solutions help deliver technologies and life changing advancements that connect people, communities, and businesses, giving them the power to achieve incredible things. Our people have the courage to be innovative. Their determination and sharp focus enable us to deliver with certainty, time and time again.

We deliver our clients’ visions through leading edge construction solutions across multiple sectors, including Enterprise Data Centres, Advanced Technology & Life Sciences, Hyperscale Data Centres, Fire Protection.

At Mercury, it is our duty to encourage and back our people to realise their vision of themselves. We place them at the heart of what we do, providing challenging opportunities to develop within a great team in a supportive environment that allows them to reach their full potential.

Key Responsibilities of the Role:

• Responsible for a project or portfolio of projects (regional / sectoral), serving as the lead planner across assigned scope, taking ownership of the full planning lifecycle, driving programme strategy, and acting as the senior planning authority for all schedule-related matters on the project or portfolio.
• Responsible for all aspects of planning, as defined by the Planning SOP, ensuring rigorous compliance with internal standards, client specifications, and contractual requirements, while also identifying opportunities to improve and refine planning processes, templates, and deliverables across the assigned projects.
• Reporting to the Planning Department on all functional matters, including schedule health, KPI trends, tool utilisation, compliance with planning standards, and providing feedback on the effectiveness of current procedures, recommending enhancements where appropriate.
• Developing and maintaining schedules for pre-construction / construction / commissioning phases using Primavera P6 (or equivalent scheduling software), taking full ownership of schedule architecture including WBS design, activity coding structures, calendar assignments, logic networks, and constraint management, ensuring schedules are robust, auditable, and reflective of the agreed construction methodology, procurement strategy, and contract programme
• Milestone projections, delay / float path analysis, leading critical path and near-critical path analysis, multi-path float consumption monitoring, and scenario-based forecasting to provide senior management and clients with robust, evidence-based milestone confidence assessments and early warning of programme threats.
• Earned Value Management (EVM) systems – leading the implementation, calibration, and ongoing management of EVM frameworks where contractually required or adopted by the project, ensuring accurate calculation and interpretation of key metrics (CPI, SPI, EAC, ETC, TCPI), and presenting EVM outputs in a manner that supports informed commercial and programme decision-making.
• Monitoring schedule performance and productivity, establishing performance baselines and benchmarks, conducting systematic analysis of planned vs. actual progress and productivity rates, identifying adverse trends at an early stage, and driving corrective action plans through collaboration with project management and site teams.
• Auditing progress on site through structured and regular site audits, independently verifying reported progress against physical completion, challenging inconsistencies, validating measurement methods and quantities, and ensuring that the schedule remains a true and credible reflection of site reality at all times.
• Preparation of tender schedules to support the estimating and bid process, developing strategically sound, competitive, and deliverable programmes that reflect proposed methodologies, resource strategies, procurement timelines, phasing options, and contract milestones, providing programme narratives and risk commentary to strengthen bid submissions.
• Supporting and overseeing weekly workface planning systems, collaborating with site supervision, construction management, and subcontractors to develop effective short-interval plans (e.g., 1-week / 3-week / 6-week lookaheads) that translate the master schedule into actionable, crew-level work plans, and monitoring adherence to improve plan reliability and predictability.
• Resource / cash loading of schedules, applying detailed labour, plant, material, subcontract, and cost data to schedule activities, producing resource histograms, cash flow forecasts, and S-curves for internal planning, client reporting, and commercial alignment, ensuring loaded data is validated and reconciled with estimating and commercial inputs.
• All other duties associated with the role, including active contribution to continuous improvement initiatives, development and refinement of planning tools, templates, procedures, and training materials, participation in departmental strategy and governance, and support of wider organisational objectives and the advancement of the planning discipline across the business

Essential Criteria for the Role:

• Minimum 5+ years’ planning and project controls experience within large-scale construction, engineering, or mission-critical environments, preferably including Data Centre project delivery.
• Strong understanding of the full project lifecycle, from design development, procurement, and construction through to commissioning, handover, and close-out
• Advanced proficiency in Primavera P6, with the ability to develop, update, maintain and analyse detailed project programmes, lookahead schedules, progress updates, and reporting baselines.
• Strong capability in programme logic development, DCMA metrics, construction sequencing, critical path analysis, baseline control, progress validation, float management, and schedule quality review
• Good knowledge of Earned Value Management, schedule variance analysis, milestone tracking, productivity trends, delay identification, and recovery planning principles.
• Strong reporting and analytical skills, including the ability to produce clear programme dashboards, lookahead reports, progress narratives, milestone trackers, constraint logs, and risk summaries.
• Good communication and stakeholder engagement skills
• High level of ownership, organisation, and attention to detail, with the ability to work independently, prioritise competing demands and meet tight reporting and delivery deadlines

Mercury is an equal opportunities employer.