Project Planner

**Details**:
**Reference number**:

- 384926

**Salary**:

- £72,664 - £83,957
- The salary range is £78,843 - £83,957 (London)
and £72,664 - £77,740 (National)
- A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

**Job grade**:

- Grade 6

**Contract type**:

- Permanent

**Business area**:

- DWP - Corporate Transformation

**Type of role**:

- Planning
Project Delivery
Other

**Working pattern**:

- Flexible working, Full-time, Job share, Part-time

**Number of jobs available**:

- 1

Contents

Location

About the job

**Benefits**:
Things you need to know

Location
- Birmingham, Blackpool, Leeds, London, Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Pontypridd, Sheffield

About the job

**Job summary**:

- Do you want to be part of an energetic, innovative team and bring your skills to one of the biggest changes to the administration of the Civil Service in decades?

We’re looking for people who are flexible, intuitive and are comfortable taking high levels of volume, speed and complexity in their stride.

A number of exciting new roles have come up in the Synergy Programme, a cross-departmental group formed in response to Government Business Service’s request for individual departments to group together in ‘clusters’ to drive efficiencies, increase buying power and improve the quality of shared service to our end users - our people.

The Synergy Programme is the largest of five departmental clusters, comprising the Ministry of Justice, Department for Work and Pensions, Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Home Office. The Department of Work and Pensions hosts the Synergy Programme. Your work will impact the procurement arrangements for the next 15 years, impacting over 50% of all Civil Servants - that’s 230,000 people across the four departments and arm’s length bodies.

Success of the Programme is crucial as Civil Servants rely on shared services to provide business critical tools in human resources, finance, payroll, and procurement. It affects everything we do, from joining a department as a new starter, the way we claim for expenses, how we buy goods and services such as our laptops and canteen provisions, to the way we receive our pensions when we retire.

**Job description**:

- ** Delivery and leadership** - Provide visible and effective leadership, leading the planning team. Develop clear vision and standards and champion the use of best practice project planning standards, tools and processes. Build strong networks both internally and externally.
- ** Resources**- Identify future capacity and capability needs of the project planning function and works with others to put in place strategies to meet them.
- ** Stakeholder management** - Build and maintain external networks to access technical and professional best practice.
- ** Project performance and controls** - Analyse performance data, looking at trends to identify areas for improvement and collaboration, and selecting appropriate methods and tools to resolve them.
- ** Guidance and support** - Provide specialist advice and support to ensure successful delivery of projects. Provide guidance and advice on selection of planning approach, tools, processes and proportionality. Identify and lead the introduction of best practice planning processes, tools and templates, using industry standard best practice as a benchmark.

**Person specification**:

- Can be a role model for planning good practice, with demonstrable experience in motivating, leading or coaching others to develop project/programme/portfolio plans.
- Can evidence a sound understanding of good Project Management, with a particular focus on Planning.
- Can show experience in complex Programme/Portfolio Planning including integrating multiple plans, plan and schedule development, tracking and reporting including key milestones and dependency management.
- Ability to lead and work with multiple, disparate partners across departments; prioritise work and to acquire cooperation from others (the ability to influence people not in their line management).
- Analytical thinking, structured problem-solving skills and outstanding communication skills.
- Expert or experience in other planning tools (i.e. MS Project).

**Behaviours**:
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

- Making Effective Decisions
- Working Together
- Managing a Quality Service
- Changing and Improving

**Benefits**:

- Alongside your salary of £72,664, Department for Work and Pensions contributes £21,050 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

DWP have a broad benefits package built around your work-life balance which includes:

- Working patterns to support work/life balance such as job sharing, term-time working, flexi-time and compressed hours.
- Generous annual leave - at least 25 days on entry, increasing up to 30 days over time (pro-rata for part time employees