Project Controls Manager - PUMA

Bilfinger UK is a leading engineering and maintenance provider, supporting customers across the chemical & petrochemical, nuclear, oil & gas, pharmaceuticals & biopharma, power & energy, utilities, renewables and food & beverage markets. We enhance the efficiency of assets, ensuring a high level of availability and reducing maintenance costs. We have extensive experience in offshore and onshore facilities; specialising in asset management services throughout all life cycle phases from consulting, engineering, manufacturing, assembly, operations, maintenance, and decommissioning. This commitment is delivered by an experienced and highly competent workforce of over 4,500 employees operating from 14 offices in strategic industrial hubs, upholding the highest standards of safety, compliance and quality.

Bilfinger UK is seeking an experienced Project Controls Manager to lead all project controls activities for Project PUMA, a major chemical plant construction project at Saltend Chemical Park. The role is tailored to a live construction environment and requires a hands-on site presence to integrate planning, progress, cost, change, risk, reporting and performance control into day-to-day project delivery. The successful candidate will operate as the project’s focal point for controls, ensuring the contract programme, project reporting and management information remain accurate, timely, compliant and decision-ready. This role must be capable of “owning” the schedule as well as leading the wider controls function.

Responsibilities

• Lead the development, maintenance and governance of the integrated project programme in Primavera P6, ensuring the schedule is robust, executable and aligned to contract requirements, WBS/coding structures, resource loading, milestones and critical path logic.
• Own the baseline, current and revised programme updates, including progress updates, variance analysis, critical path review, float analysis and reporting of delay or recovery positions.
• Manage integration of programme inputs from multiple parties and ensure alignment between construction activities, procurement, fabrication, subcontractors, external interfaces and client constraints.
• Operate as a visible project controls lead on site, working directly with the Project Director, Construction Managers, Commercial team, planners, engineers and package leads to ensure the live programme reflects actual site conditions, access constraints, workface sequencing and productivity realities.
• Support daily/weekly construction coordination through programme meetings, short-term planning, action tracking, mitigation planning and challenge of progress or data anomalies.
• Ensure controls outputs are practical and usable for a live construction site, including progress capture, productivity measurement, lookaheads, work sequencing, and visibility of blockers and interfaces.
• Support NEC4 programme compliance by managing accepted programme submissions, reviews, comments, amendments and approvals in accordance with project procedures and timescales.
• Lead the time impact assessment of change, including early warnings, compensation events and mitigation options, ensuring revised programmes clearly show impacted activities, critical path effects, float changes and entitlement positions.
• Work closely with commercial and project teams to ensure programme, cost and contractual positions remain aligned.
• Own project controls reporting for PUMA, including weekly and monthly reporting cycles, project board inputs, KPI development, reporting calendars, templates and management dashboards.
• Review and approve all planning / cost / performance information prior to issue for project reviews and board meetings, ensuring reports are clear, accurate and decision-ready.
• Provide clear reporting on current position versus contract milestones, planned completion, deterministic completion, risk allowance and emerging threats/opportunities.
• Lead project risk management activities across schedule and project controls, including maintenance of risk registers, active mitigation planning, risk retirement / drawdown management and integration of risk outcomes into programme and reporting.
• Support quantitative schedule / risk analysis and ensure time risk allowances and mitigation measures are reflected in the live controls environment.
• Ensure early warnings are identified promptly, discussed with stakeholders and reflected in the programme and management actions.
• Establish and maintain effective working relationships with cost, commercial and procurement functions so programme status, expenditure, forecasts, change control and earned / quantity-based progress measures remain aligned.
• Support the development and application of rules of credit, BoQ-based progress principles, value analysis and budget/change alignment where required by the project.
• Help ensure the project has the controls structure needed to support transparent cost and hours reporting against scope and progress.
• Implement and maintain disciplined project controls processes, procedures and data structures, including coding standards, reporting requirements, activity structures and systems turnover readiness.
• Drive continuous improvement in project controls maturity on PUMA, embedding best practice in planning, reporting, change management and site performance monitoring.
• Support digital and data-enabled delivery, including use of reporting tools, dashboards and management information systems.

Specific Site-Based Expectations

• Be present and effective in a construction site environment, with regular interaction across construction, engineering, subcontractors, commercial and client-side project controls teams.
• Work within a project environment shaped by CDM responsibilities, live interfaces, designated laydown/logistics areas and high dependency on coordinated execution sequencing.
• Translate field conditions, daily reports, productivity realities and package constraints into credible programme and performance outputs that the project leadership team can act upon.

Experience, Skills and Qualifications

• Significant experience in project controls leadership on major construction / engineering / industrial projects.
• Strong working knowledge of Primavera P6 and the ability to personally own and interrogate complex schedules.
• Strong understanding of NEC3 / NEC4, especially programme acceptance, early warnings and compensation events - Option B in particular.
• Demonstrable experience in planning, progress measurement, reporting, change management, risk management and cost/commercial interfaces.
• Experience of petrochemical, process plant, energy, heavy industrial or similarly complex construction environments is highly desirable.
• The project context is a major chemical plant build involving multidisciplinary SMEIP scope.
• Strong communication, stakeholder management and analytical capability, with confidence to challenge and influence at site and senior leadership level.
• Knowledge of risk tools / quantitative schedule risk analysis and exposure to SAP / ERP / Power BI / Microsoft reporting tools would be advantageous.
• Degree, HND or equivalent in engineering, construction management, project controls, quantity surveying or related field preferred; relevant professional membership or equivalent experience welcomed.

Personal Attributes

• Strong ownership mindset and able to “run the controls engine” for a live project.
• Comfortable being site-facing and working in a fast-moving construction environment.
• Collaborative but prepared to challenge assumptions, poor data or weak delivery logic.
• Structured, disciplined and detail-focused, with the ability to turn complex project information into clear actions and management insight.