Senior Planner WCPD

West Coast Partnership Development; Greater London; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 95,000; Full time

Job summary

West Coast Partnership Development is seeking a Senior Planner to lead planning activities for the programme, ensuring coherence, deliverability and value across projects and the overall schedule.

You will manage the planning and reporting team, embed planning best practice, baseline and update schedules, and provide timely milestones to Heads of and Directors. The 18-month Fixed Term contract is based in London with a 3-days-per-week office requirement near Euston.

Qualifications

• Strong planning and control discipline knowledge.
• Experience with railway processes and operations.
• Excellent written and oral communication.
• Ability to influence stakeholders up to Director level.

Responsibilities

• Lead planning activities for the programme, ensuring coherence and deliverability.
• Baseline and update project schedules and provide robust reporting.
• Develop and embed planning processes and standards across the organisation.
• Manage the Planning team and ensure resources align with business needs.
• Provide timely information to Heads of and Directors for decision making.
• Coordinate with PMO and finance to ensure schedule integrity and performance reviews.

Skills

Project planning

Railway operations

Contract types

Communication skills

Stakeholder influence

Collaboration

Professional body membership

Education

Degree-level education

Job description

West Coast Partnership Development is the trusted partner of the Department for Transport (DfT) who are working towards creating and implementing the operations for High Speed 2 Ltd (HS2). We will design, develop and mobilise the high-speed service operations which will deliver benefits including more capacity, quicker journey times and a step-change in customer experience.

We are excited to present an opportunity to join the PMO team as the Senior Planner on an 18-month Fixed Term contract. This is chance to join a small, high calibre team working on once in a lifetime programme – launching HS2.

As a small organisation, WCPD is agile, meaning all our staff have a direct impact on the success of the company and are expected to contribute to the ongoing development and improvement of the business.

The Senior Planner is responsible for leading on Planning activities for West Coast Partnership Development, ensuring programme coherence and control and assuring the deliverability of individual projects and overall programme. Responsible for challenging planning and project assumptions to ensure appropriateness and remove optimism bias and/or inefficient delivery to ensure value for money and deliverability.

Lead the delivery of monitoring and control of WCPD programme to provide oversight and guidance to WCPD Heads of and Directors to ensure engagement and timely delivery of key milestones and Business Plan Commitments BPCs. Ensure Senior Leadership Team have appropriate information to be able to monitor programme delivery.

Embed a culture of planning good practice across the organisation. Define and maintain WCPD planning standards, expectations and good practice. Ensure compliance, identify areas for development, foster continuous improvement and innovation. Manage the planning and reporting team to ensure a professional approach to planning and reporting is implemented using specialised tools and techniques.

In this role, you will:

• Lead the provision of programme management and reporting systems for the business, including the identification, licensing and maintenance to deliver appropriate capabilities and resilience.
• Ensure project schedules are appropriately baseline and updated to deliver a robust level of project control and reporting, including to the WCPD Executive.
• Lead the development of programme reporting, ensuring appropriate processes and detail to varied stakeholders, including both internal and external stakeholders.
• Ensure programme and project schedules are compliant with contractual and any other requirements.
• Lead the development, implementation, embedding and update of project and programme planning processes and procedures, ensuring the comply with good practice standards.
• Ensure WCPD has the ability to collate schedule information to enable accurate records of programme history to be accessed and support any business or programme assessment and performance reviews.
• Produce scenario plans to support future programme requirements & options.
• Lead, manage and develop the Planning team, ensuring it delivers to business expectations, provides appropriate levels of resources and skills, and be responsible for the development and wellbeing of the team.
• Input to overall performance, approach and planning of the PMO Directorate as a member of the senior PMO team.
• Ensure inputs to, and outputs of the WCPD schedules are accurate and reflect the latest planning assumptions and baselines.
• Lead the WCPD time sheeting process and its outputs to the finance team on a periodic basis, a critical task in the management of business finances and reporting.

We are looking for someone who has:

• Excellent knowledge and experience of project planning and control disciplines.
• Knowledge and understanding of railway processes and operations.
• Experience of working with different contract types.
• Strong written and oral communication skills.
• The ability to quickly develop and build collaborative relationships across the programme.
• Ability to influence a variety of different stakeholders up to Director level.
• Membership of a related professional body.
• Educated to Degree level or demonstrable project delivery experience.

The role is based in London. The expectation will be a minimum of 3 days per week in our office near Euston station and Warren Street Underground Station.

West Coast Partnership Development

West Coast Partnership comprises two distinct parts – Avanti West Coast and West Coast Partnership Development. Avanti West Coast runs the InterCity West Coast train services from London to north England, north Wales and Scotland.

Our work in WCPD is focused on developing plans for what the new high-speed services will look like (customer experience), how they will work (railway operations) and how we will start running new services and trains (mobilisation). Over the next 10 years we will develop and implement a programme (HS2 Ltd are building the new railway and associated infrastructure).

https://www.avantiwestcoast.co.uk/about-us/a-pioneering-partnership