Sr Project Cost Analyst

Senior Cost Analyst

The Senior Cost Analyst is a key member of BGE's Project Initiation Team, responsible for developing and validating cost estimates and cash flow forecasts for major Transmission capital projects during the early stages of the project lifecycle.

This role focuses on building reliable, defensible cost information that supports project scoping, feasibility, and readiness for Phase 1 authorization. Working closely with Project Managers, Schedulers, Estimators, Planning, Engineering, and Investment Strategy, the Senior Cost Analyst integrates cost inputs with schedule, scope, and risk to develop cohesive and credible financial projections. The role ensures that early?stage estimates are supported by clear assumptions, appropriate methodologies, and defined ranges of uncertainty, enabling informed capital decision?making. The Senior Cost Analyst plays a critical role in identifying cost drivers, validating inputs, and assessing financial risks early in the project lifecycle. This includes developing contingency approaches, evaluating estimate maturity, and supporting alignment between project cost forecasts and portfolio?level financial planning. By providing transparency into cost assumptions and risks, this role helps improve financial accuracy and reduce downstream rework. In addition, the Senior Cost Analyst supports the development of project cash flows aligned with preliminary schedules, ensuring that funding requirements are understood and incorporated into both near?term and long?range planning. The role also contributes to the preparation of governance materials by delivering clear, consistent, and decision?ready cost information. The Senior Cost Analyst does not support execution?phase cost control activities instead, the role ensures that projects are transitioned to execution teams with a well?defined estimate, transparent assumptions, and a clear understanding of cost risks and driversstrengthening execution readiness and improving overall portfolio predictability.

Primary Duties

• Manage project forecasting, accrual, and status process. Attend required meetings and reach out to project stakeholders for detailed project information. Identify project/program budget, forecast, and authorization issues early and assist in developing resolutions to meet project metrics.
• Assist in the development and continued monitoring of the budgets and LRPs for transmission, sub-station, distribution, and gas (BGE) projects and programs. Monitor, track, and report project budgets, forecasts, accruals, and actuals.
• Manage project and program financial risks and opportunities and provide detailed analysis of variances to budget, quarterly plan, and month over month variance analysis. Support project management at resulting financial challenge meetings.
• Develop, organize, and present project and program performance reports for both internal and external use.
• Schedule and facilitate monthly forecasting and accrual meetings and prepare monthly project accruals and journal entries for project manager review and submittal to Finance department before submittal to Finance group, reporting variances and issues to both the project management and project controls leadership.
• Analyze project actual and forecast data accuracy to ensure compliance with annual internal and external Sarbanes Oxley Audits.
• Manage the vendor forecasting process which is used as a source of input for both forecasting and accruals by Project Controls.
• Provide support to Project Managers for presentations and forms required for project authorization.

Job Scope

• This is an individual contributor position that works independently with only general direction, relying on knowledge skills and judgment acquired through education and relevant experience to plan and accomplish assigned tasks and goals. The position regularly mentors less experienced colleagues.
• Position requires routine interaction with key internal and external stakeholders, executives, directors, managers and staff across the organization.
• May require working extended hours and/or shift work to support business operations.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Financial or Technical Field and 4-7 years related experience, or in lieu of Bachelor's degree, 6-9 years relevant business experience is required.
• Comprehensive understanding of applicable standards, methods, processes and practices, business fundamentals, and performance metrics in the specific functional area supported by this position.
• Ability to provide in-depth analysis and apply forecasting, analytical and statistical problem solving, financial, accounting, and budget analysis.
• Demonstrated strong analytical skills for project financial evaluation and risk identification and mitigation.
• Customer driven with strong oral and written communications skills and strong analytical, problem solving and project management skills.
• Comprehensive knowledge of the financial / cost analyst practices, procedures and principles of performance analysis (trending, root cause and gap analysis) benchmarking and audit compliance.
• Ability to analyze organizational data and complex problems, interpret and recommend alternative courses of action, and implement intervention strategies to attain performance targets.
• Demonstrated strong analytical skills for project evaluation including analysis of complex projects with economic, financial, risk and decision analysis.

Preferred Qualifications

• Financial advanced degree.
• 5-8 years project cost tracking experience in electric / gas transmission, distribution, and substation industry
• Advanced proficiency in standard software applications (e.g., Microsoft Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, Project), specialized business technologies and applications to retrieve and analyze data in support of business needs
• Proficient in business case development and ability to effectively present business cases to business unit leadership.
• Strong understanding of cost estimating methodologies (parametric, analogous, bottoms?up), with ability to develop defensible estimates under uncertainty and clearly communicate assumptions and confidence levels.
• Experience integrating cost, schedule, and risk, including use of contingency, escalation, and risk?informed estimating to support project readiness and capital decision?making.
• Proven ability to develop cash flow forecasts aligned with preliminary schedules, supporting both near?term funding needs and long?range capital planning.
• Experience analyzing cost drivers, trends, and variances, and translating findings into actionable insights for project teams and management.
• Ability to coordinate with Engineering, Planning, Scheduling, and Project Management to validate estimate inputs, ensure alignment, and improve overall estimate quality. Familiarity with governance and capital authorization processes, including preparation of cost inputs for approval packages and readiness reviews.
• Experience supporting or coordinating with Investment Strategy or Finance organizations, including understanding how estimates impact capital forecasts and portfolio decisions.
• Proficiency in estimating and financial tools (e.g., Excel modeling, estimating systems such as WinEst or similar), with ability to present cost information clearly to both technical and leadership audiences.
• Experience working within a regulated utility or capital project environment, with understanding of Transmission project cost drivers such as labor, materials, permitting, and long?lead equipment.
• Demonstrated ability to perform effectively in a matrixed environment, influencing stakeholders and ensuring timely, accurate cost inputs across multiple concurrent projects.
• Experience supporting time?sensitive or accelerated efforts, delivering reasonable estimate ranges and cash flow projections when full design or detailed takeoffs are not available.