Senior Project Control Manager

NextPlay Jobs; Wichita (KS); On-site; USD 130,000 - 175,000; Full time

Job summary

NextPlay Jobs is seeking a Senior Project Controls Manager to create and lead a new Project Controls function for complex capital projects. The role combines hands-on leadership with building standards, reporting, and controls, delivering integrated cost and schedule management and performance visibility.

You will define processes, establish EVA, CPI, SPI, and KPI tracking, and partner with Project Managers to drive predictability.

Qualifications

• Strong professional experience in project controls, cost control, scheduling, or project delivery.
• Experience with integrated cost and schedule management.
• Hands-on knowledge of EVA, CPI, SPI, KPI tracking, budgets, forecasts, and reporting.
• Ability to analyze schedules, milestones and recovery plans.
• Construction, EPC, engineering, or capital-project domain experience preferred.

Responsibilities

• Build a new Project Controls function with standards, processes, reporting, and best practices.
• Introduce integrated cost and schedule management across the project portfolio.
• Establish and track EVA, CPI, SPI, KPIs, and other project performance metrics.
• Build budgets, forecasts, actuals, commitments, and margin outlooks.
• Create, update, and analyze project schedules, including milestones, critical path, lookaheads, and recovery plans.
• Manage change logs, change order tracking, scope changes, pricing support, approvals, and baseline updates.
• Identify cost, schedule, and margin risks early and provide actionable insight to project leadership.
• Partner with Project Managers to improve project predictability and performance.
• Develop scalable project controls tools and processes as the organization grows.
• Help hire, develop, and eventually lead a team of 2-3 Project Controllers.

Skills

Project controls

Cost control

Scheduling

Earned Value Analysis

Forecasting

KPIs

Leadership

Change management

Job description

Compensation: $130,000-$175,000 base (will relocate for $12,000)

The Opportunity

A growing engineering and design-build organization is creating a new Project Controls function within its Projects Team and is looking for a Senior Project Controls Manager to build and lead it.

This is not a role where you will inherit an established project controls program. You will have the opportunity to define it.

The Senior Project Controls Manager will introduce more sophisticated, integrated cost and schedule management practices across complex capital projects, including Earned Value Analysis (EVA), CPI, SPI, KPI tracking, forecasting, scheduling, and change management.

Initially, this will be a hands-on leadership role. You will build the standards, processes, reporting, and controls framework while partnering closely with Project Managers and project delivery teams. As the function grows, you will oversee a team of approximately 2-3 Project Controllers.

What You’ll Own

• Build a new Project Controls function, including standards, processes, reporting, and best practices
• Introduce integrated cost and schedule management across the project portfolio
• Establish and track EVA, CPI, SPI, KPIs, and other project performance metrics
• Build and maintain project budgets, forecasts, actuals, commitments, and margin outlooks
• Create, update, and analyze project schedules, including milestones, critical path, lookaheads, and recovery plans
• Manage change logs, change order tracking, scope changes, pricing support, approvals, and baseline updates
• Identify cost, schedule, and margin risks early and provide actionable insight to project leadership
• Partner closely with Project Managers and delivery teams to improve project predictability and performance
• Develop scalable project controls tools and processes as the organization continues to grow
• Help hire, develop, and eventually lead a team of 2-3 Project Controllers

What We’re Looking For

• Strong professional experience in project controls, cost control, scheduling, or project delivery
• Demonstrated experience with integrated cost and schedule management
• Hands-on knowledge of Earned Value Analysis, CPI, SPI, KPI tracking, budgets, forecasts, and project performance reporting
• Experience managing project actuals, commitments, forecasts, and margin outlooks
• Ability to analyze project schedules, critical paths, milestones, and recovery plans
• Experience managing change controls, change orders, scope changes, and project baselines
• Construction, EPC, engineering, industrial, or other capital-project experience strongly preferred
• Ability to create project controls processes and standards rather than simply operate within an established system
• Leadership capabilities with the willingness to remain hands-on as the function is built

Who Will Thrive Here

You may be a strong fit if you have spent your career in a construction, EPC, engineering, or capital-project environment where rigorous project controls are already part of how projects are managed.

You understand how cost and schedule interact, know how to turn project data into meaningful insight, and can identify when a project is beginning to move off plan before it becomes a larger problem.

Most importantly, you are comfortable walking into an organization that wants to elevate its project controls capabilities and saying, "Here’s how we should build this."

Why Consider This Opportunity?

Build something from the ground up.

Rather than inheriting someone else’s project controls framework, you will help define how the function operates going forward.

High visibility and impact.

The processes you establish will directly influence how major engineering and construction projects are planned, measured, forecasted, and delivered.

Leadership without giving up the work.

This role offers the opportunity to build and lead a team while remaining close to the projects and data.

Join an established, growing organization.

The company has decades of experience delivering complex engineering and design-build projects and is continuing to invest in its project delivery capabilities.

• Location: Colwich, Kansas, in the greater Wichita area
• Schedule: Onsite Monday through Friday
• Employment: Full-time
• Timing: Immediate

If you have built or led project controls within construction, EPC, engineering, or complex capital projects and are interested in creating a function rather than simply stepping into one, we would welcome a confidential conversation.