Programme Planner

**Programme Planner - **Inside IR35**

**Contract Term: 12 Months**

**Contracting Authority: UK Research & Innovation**

**Location: Hybrid - Remote & Swindon as required for meetings.**

UKRI Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) department provides the enterprise technical services that underpin and enable UKRI’s business capabilities.

There are a range of projects that cannot be supported by existing Technology Services staff and require additional resource to deliver. This role will address the quality and effectiveness of the Business IT service across multiple service lines to tackle ineffective, immature delivery of the service, remediate processes that are currently broken or sub-optimal and focus on driving efficiency through effective demand and capacity management. The role will be critical for balancing the BAU/ project resource demand and appropriate prioritisation.

**As a **Programme Planner **your main responsibilities will be to**:

- Provide clarity on key milestones to define what, when & how activities will be organised to ensure the outcomes can be achieved.
- Identify tasks, activities, interdependencies & outputs for our projects and work with the team to track / monitor progress.
- Support capability building & the use of best practice in planning / reporting.
- Challenge and test project assumptions to ensure plans are realistic & achievable.
- Develop breakdown structures, quality criteria, product descriptions & monitoring strategy.
- Support project managers to identify options to optimise delivery through resource smoothing, resource levelling and rescheduling of activities.
- Identify & plan for wider resource requirements for our projects.
- Ensure stakeholder responsibilities and needs are understood and addressed in reporting arrangements.
- Monitor and analyse information, reporting progress, slippage and highlighting areas of risk and opportunity.
- To manage projects within our portfolio ensuring that all agreed deliverables meet or exceed stakeholder expectations.
- Ensure effective risk management is in place across all relevant projects, so that risks to delivery and the wider UKRI can be identified and managed from the outset before they become issues.
- Follow best practices, techniques, and tools for project management and planning, tailoring as appropriate to the situation.

**You’ll have relevant experience in**:

- Demonstrable Programme / Project Planning experience within technical environments.
- Experience in Resource estimation and Demand & Capacity management.
- Demonstrable Stakeholder Management skills - communication & contribution to team motivation & problem solving.
- Ability to assess, evaluate, prioritise & mitigate risk and issues in a project environment.
- A relevant Project Management qualification - Prince 2 / MSP or equivalent - desirable.- Please be aware that this role can only be worked within the UK and not Overseas._