Head of Project Controls/pmo

Location: Crawley, United Kingdom

In fast changing markets, customers worldwide rely on Thales. Thales is a business where brilliant people from all over the world come together to share ideas and inspire each other. In aerospace, transportation, defence, security and space, our architects design innovative solutions that make our tomorrow's possible.

Together we offer fantastic opportunities for committed employees to learn and develop their career with us. At Thales UK, we research, develop, and supply technology and services that impact the lives of millions of people each day to make life better, and keep us safer. We innovate across five major industries; Aerospace, Defence, Ground Transportation, Security and Space. Your health and well-being matters to us and that’s why we offer you the flexibility to do what’s important to you; whether that’s part time hours, job sharing, home working, or the ability to flex your start and finish times. Where possible, we support a working pattern that suits your lifestyle and helps you reach your ambitions.

**Primary Purpose of the Role**:
The purpose of this role is to define, implement and operate best practice Project Controls for large, complex, business critical projects. Working independently or leading a team, this will include the interpretation of data and use of indicators to support proactive Project Leadership and Senior Management decision making. In particular, the role holder will ensure that all Projects have a robust Integrated Master Schedule (IMS) and Performance Management Baseline (PMB).

The individual will be a member of a small, specialist central team within the UK Function but will be deployed across the different Thales UK business units through a series of assignments. The nature and duration of assignments will vary, spanning the full delivery lifecycle and the breadth of business areas within which Thales UK operates. Examples include the definition and documentation of a Project Controls Systems during Complex Bids, Interim Project Controls Leadership, and providing surge capacity to Project Leadership teams in turnaround/recovery scenarios. Challenge, complexity and business criticality will be a common theme.

The role will require an excellent knowledge of Project Control Systems, coupled with leadership and stakeholder management skills. The individual will have an outstanding track-record of successfully operating in high value complex bids and projects, with a particular focus on project setup and turnaround. They must be versatile, resilient, mobile, enjoy variety, be capable of sustaining a high tempo and consistently making a real impact on delivery performance.

**Principal Relationships**:

- Project Leadership: Project Manager/SEM/PDA
- Project Controls Team
- Work Package Managers
- Bid & Project Management Functional Team
- Integrated Business Planning team
- Manufacturing (Production Planners)
- Domain Sector/Portfolio Delivery Leads
- Related Functions E.g. Finance, Quality

**Key Responsibilities and Tasks**:

- Diagnosing performance issues, developing and implementing action plans
- Leadership and management - motivating and supporting Project Control Teams and individuals within those Teams
- Role modelling the Thales Leadership Model behaviours, embedding a strong sense of delivery accountability and a proactive risk and opportunity management culture at all levels of the team
- Allocating Project Control resources, carefully balancing demand with capacity and relative priorities
- Integrated Master Schedule Creation (IMS) & Baseline Management
- Facilitating planning workshops to support WBS and IMS construction, ensuring the implementation of best practice at all times
- Creating the IMS in Primavera P6, ensuring consistency with individual work packages and reflecting all technical and non-technical requirements
- Ensuring the level of IMS detail is appropriate for the type and complexity of project, that tasks are logically linked in accordance with the design lifecycle and that all internal and external dependencies are captured
- Supporting internal and external reviews with respect to the IMS including the critical path, progress and overall health of the project
- Ensuring that the Integrated Master Schedule is robust and that actuals/progress/forecasts are captured in a timely manner each month
- Conducting Schedule Risk Analysis, coaching and educating project teams on how to deploy the technique and interpret the output
- Implementing and operating change control across programmatic baselines - ensuring clarity over the Performance Management Baseline (PMB) and forecasts vs the PMB at all times
- Performance Management
- Ensuring that appropriate KPIs are deployed that accurately reflect progress and performance
- Identification of trends, analysis of variances and recommending appropriate corrective actions
- Ensuring a strong focus on proactive risk and opportunity management, including ident