Senior Project Controls Manager

Senior Project Controls Manager

The Senior Project Controls Manager serves as the primary Project Controls business partner for an assigned Delivery Vice President and the associated project portfolio. Reporting to the Project Controls Director, this role provides portfolio-level leadership, coordination, and oversight for cost management, forecasting, scheduling, risk management, change management, energy performance, reporting, and Project Controls execution across the assigned portfolio.

The Senior Project Controls Manager works directly with Delivery leadership and project teams to improve predictability and project outcomes. The role ensures enterprise and regional Project Controls standards are consistently applied, forecasts are credible, risks and changes are identified early, and project teams receive timely, practical support. While the position may directly lead selected strategic or high-visibility projects, its primary responsibility is oversight and integration of Project Controls activities across the assigned Delivery Vice President's portfolio.

This is an embedded project leadership role, not a back-office reporting position. The Senior Project Controls Manager acts as the connection between Project Controls leadership and Delivery leadership, providing objective insight, escalating material concerns, driving corrective action, and developing Project Controls personnel into proactive and commercially aware members of project teams.

Responsibilities

Delivery VP Partnership, Portfolio Leadership, and Project Setup

• Serve as the primary Project Controls point of contact and business partner for an assigned Delivery Vice President. Drive project reviews, portfolio reviews, and Delivery leadership meetings, providing objective, data-driven insight into project performance, risk, and forecast reliability.
• Partner with Project Executives, Project Managers, Engineering, Supply Chain, Pre-Construction, Finance, and Project Controls personnel to identify emerging issues and convert project plans into executable cost, schedule, risk, and resource strategies.
• Support the Project Controls Director in aligning Project Controls resources to the portfolio and integrating those resources into project leadership teams.
• Along with the Project Controls Director, lead the effort from Phase 3 through Commercial Close of project setup, execution planning, baseline schedules, work breakdown structures, time-phased budgets, and execution plans in alignment with enterprise standards.
• Escalate significant portfolio risks, forecast concerns, schedule threats, change exposure, performance issues, and resource constraints to the Project Controls Director and Delivery leadership.

Cost Management, Financial Performance, and Forecasting

• Oversee cost management, financial performance, and forecasting across the assigned portfolio, including budgeting, cost control, commitment tracking, cash flow, cost trending, variance analysis, and Estimate-at-Completion development.
• Direct oversight over the Cost Controller and review monthly forecasts, challenge assumptions, validate cost-to-complete methodologies, and confirm that risks, opportunities, and performance drivers are quantified and documented.
• Partner with Project Management, Operations Finance, and project teams to align project forecasts with operational expectations and financial reporting.
• Monitor forecast accuracy and portfolio performance trends, identify opportunities for improvement, and support corrective actions that protect project value and margin objectives.
• Provide clear portfolio-level visibility into budget, forecast, cash, and financial health for Project Controls and Delivery leadership.

Schedule Management

• Direct oversight over the Project Scheduler - monitor schedule performance and support the development, integrity, and active management of project schedules across the assigned portfolio.
• Review critical path, milestone performance, resource considerations, contractual commitments, energy savings milestones, and recovery plans with project teams and scheduling resources.
• Pressure-test schedule assumptions, identify threats to key dates, and facilitate practical actions to improve schedule quality and protect delivery commitments.
• Ensure schedule updates and practices align with enterprise standards and provide reliable information for project decision-making.

Risk & Change Management

• Maintain visibility into major portfolio risks and opportunities and ensure project teams actively maintain risk registers, ownership, mitigation actions, and potential cost and schedule impacts.
• Support the use of appropriate deterministic and probabilistic risk methods based on project needs and enterprise requirements.
• Review significant change events, trends, claims, and potential impacts to cost, schedule, energy performance, and contract outcomes. Ensure that the change register is actively maintained.
• Promote timely identification, evaluation, documentation, approval, and incorporation of change into project cost, schedule, and forecasts.
• Identify recurring portfolio issues and elevate material exposures and recommended actions to Project Controls and Delivery leadership.

Energy Management

• Ensure energy production, savings, performance commitments, and related economics are incorporated into cost, schedule, risk, change, and forecasting processes. Ensure that P6 schedule updates are provided to the Energy Management Team on a regular cadence.
• Partner with project and technical leaders to identify performance variances and support corrective actions that protect contractual commitments and project economics.

Planning & Project Setup

• Accountable for project planning, execution planning, and startup of each project that includes the coordination of support functions, including preconstruction, supply chain and estimating. The outcome is the development of a baseline schedule, engineering packages, the WBS, preliminary TPS and ultimately the Execution Plan prior to Commercial Close that can controlled and led from day one and maintained through the end of the projects.
• Actively shapes proposals and project startups so that controllability and accountability are built in from the outset.
• Accountable for ensuring project setup aligns with enterprise standards and is appropriately scaled to project size, complexity, and risk.

Interface with Operational Finance

• Assists the Director as necessary as the primary Project Controls interface to Operations Finance, partnering on revenue recognition, margin, cash, reforecasting, and month-end alignment between project controls and the financial ledger.
• Responsible for driving timely resolution when project forecasts, operational expectations, and financial reporting do not align.

Reporting, Performance Analytics and Executive Communication

• Lead Project Controls support for monthly project reviews, monthly status reports, executive reporting, and client reporting when required.
• Ensure information presented to Delivery VPs, Regional SVPs, Project Controls leadership, and executive leadership is accurate, timely, consistent, and actionable.
• Use dashboards, key performance indicators, trend analysis, and portfolio reporting to surface emerging risks, systemic issues, opportunities, and recommended actions.
• Ensure portfolio reporting follows enterprise definitions, standards, templates, and reporting cadence.

Team Leadership, Culture and Talent Development

• Provide day-to-day functional leadership, coaching, and mentoring to Project Controls personnel assigned to the portfolio.
• Coordinate workload balancing and resource needs across projects, and elevate staffing constraints or capability gaps to the Project Controls Director.
• Support onboarding, development planning, knowledge transfer, and succession readiness for assigned Project Controls personnel.
• Reinforce a proactive, ownership-driven culture in which Project Controls personnel challenge assumptions, anticipate risk, and contribute directly to project performance.
• Provide input to the Project Controls Director regarding personnel performance, development needs, staffing, and portfolio resource allocation.

Standards, Tools, and Continuous Improvement

• Implement and champion the enterprise Project Controls standards, procedures, tools, systems, and methodologies established by Project Controls leadership.
• Monitor adoption and execution across the assigned portfolio, address routine gaps with project teams, and elevate material or recurring issues to the Project Controls Director.
• Review Project Controls deliverables for quality, completeness, consistency, and alignment with established requirements.
• Identify opportunities to improve execution through technology, automation, analytics, standardization, and proven Project Controls practices.
• Support regional and enterprise initiatives led by the Project Controls Director and Vice President of Project Controls.

Direct Project Responsibility

• Maintain direct Project Controls ownership of one or more strategic, complex, or high-visibility projects as assigned.
• Serve as the lead Project Controls resource for assigned projects while balancing portfolio-level leadership responsibilities.
• Diagnose project challenges, facilitate issue resolution, and support corrective and recovery actions related to cost, schedule, forecast, risk, change, and energy performance.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Construction Management, Project Management, Business, Finance, or a related field or 4 years of experience in lieu of degree
• 10+ years of progressive experience in Project Controls, construction management, program controls, or related project delivery functions within engineering, commercial construction, industrial, energy, utilities,