Programme Coordination Assurance Manager

at  Transport for London

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES

• Establishes practices that ensure all programmes and projects’ data is accurate and maintained to inform business decisions and allow for effective and efficient works coordination and collaboration (value of projects and programmes up to £4billion per annum)
• Responsible for managing the Resources Service Requests raised by internal Sponsors and third parties, as well as the ASITE Project Manager Service Requests
• Responsible for creating and maintaining the annual work allocations for contractors delivering Capital schemes via any of the contract frameworks, to provide them with workload look-ahead so they can ensure resource availability and to inform them of ,Capital’s priorities
• Liaison with internal and external works promoters to obtain updates on on-going works programmes to aid the optimisation of the delivery programme. This includes TfL Sponsors, Boroughs, Developers and TfL Supply Chain.
• Creates and maintain a one source of the truth with the delivery programme look-ahead that is shared with key stakeholders to smooth their resource requirements and ensure delivery of projects
• Influences Project Management Teams to apply sound project and programme management framework (Pathway) to assure successful project and programme delivery, providing guidance where required and sitting in the Board meetings for Stage Gate Certificate signature
• Ensures programmes’ coordination and collaboration by playing a key role in change control processes
• Identifies and resolves delivery conflicts, risks, issues and opportunities through the stakeholder engagement and implementation of consistent processes and guidance documents
• Builds capability by identifying and resolving internal delivery performance issues, proposing new ways of working/ processes and providing practical support or assistance to others to make their job easier and improve their performance
• Establishes good working relationships across delivery and sponsor teams, communicating timely, accurate and relevant information on data quality, audits, compliance and governance
• Responsible for driving improvements to project and programme data quality and integrity through data audits, maintaining a high level of confidence in look-ahead schedules and reporting on on-going programmes’ status

SKILLS

• Stakeholder management, communication and influence: Poses good communication skills both orally and in writing, maximising senior stakeholder involvement and commitment in order to facilitate the delivery of high risk or complexity projects/ programmes and influencing the audience to follow due process, while ensuring business priorities and how others’ contribution supports TfL priorities are understood. (Essential)
• Budgeting, cost management, change management and change control: Consistently ensures delivery of projects/ programmes to approved budget, ensures compliance to TfL processes and understands how programme and project budgets align with Departmental budgets and cost plans, identifying the key change drivers to support benefits delivery beyond the lifecycle of the project. (Desirable)
• Information management and reporting: Designs, develops and operates administrative and information systems, research sources, files and document retrieval systems. (Essential)
• Business Process Improvement: Has the ability to analyse business performance and processes to identify opportunities for improvements to efficiency and quality. Has the ability to identify critical inputs and outputs, understanding the dependencies, and the ability to assess feasibility and recommend new approaches. Helps establishing requirements for the implementation of changes in the business process. (Desirable)
• Problem solving, decision making and result focus: Has the ability to work under pressure in a fast-paced environment and manage conflicting priorities to achieve tight deadlines. (Essential)
• Project and Programme management: Applies detailed project/ programme management knowledge including PPM methods and practices to overcome difficulties in delivering project objectives, identifying and solving coordination issues between different programmes of works and supporting the project management teams in delivering programme objectives. (Essential)

KNOWLEDGE

• Projects and Programme management methodologies (e.g. Pathway/ Prince 2/ APM) (Essential)
• Coordination of multiple works programmes (Desirable)
• Strong working knowledge of programme and project cost management, and change control (Essential)
• TfL Organisational Structure (Desirable)
• Finance and programme management systems (e.g. SAP, TfL EPM, ASITE, MS Project Online, Aconex) (Desirable)
• Awareness of programming tools (e.g. MS Project, Primavera) (Desirable)

EXPERIENCE

• Experience of interrogating and analysing different information sources, presenting them to decision makers to provide insight, support project and programme assurance and influence re-prioritisation and re-development of delivery plans (Essential)
• Proven experience using data formatting tools (e.g. MS Excel, Power BI) (Essential)
• Coordination of multi-disciplined projects and programmes with a variety of volume and complexity (Desirable)
• Proven record of taking personal responsibility and accountability for coordinating concurrent conflicting projects, influencing the stakeholders, improving processes to ensure delivery and understanding organisational constraints that influence business wide decisions (Desirable)

Capital adopts a one team approach that shares resources to deliver projects efficiently. As the role will cover project work across all modes within Capital, the job holder should be flexible in terms of movement and location of work to support in successful delivery of assigned projects.
This role ensures the coordination and optimisation of the programmes across all Capital Projects and Programmes with Highways interface by working with internal and external stakeholders to ensure projects & programmes delivery and provide coordination assurance, supporting the development and implementation of best practice within the area of project and programme management.
They are the first point of contact with Sponsors, managing the hand-over of projects from internal and external promoters into Capital Delivery via the Resources Service Request systems and ensuring that the projects handed over to Capital have all the relevant information and approvals prior to being accepted and allocated to the project management, construction management and programme coordination management teams. As well as supporting the internal TfL resource’s allocations into projects, they also play a key role on the contractors annualised works allocations, applying their knowledge of current schemes being delivered across the directorate as well as the historical works already implemented.
This role is crucial for the creation, accuracy and maintenance of the data repository used for programme coordination, getting approvals and delivery of schemes, therefore works side by side with the Programme Coordination Managers, Construction Management Team, Sponsors, Asset Investment Team, contractors and Project Management Teams, influencing the contractors, Asset Management, Project Management and Sponsorship community to follow the TfL project management framework and processes, and apply sound project management and best practice, as well as providing guidance where required.