Central Head of PMO in City of London

Head of Central PMO (Portfolio Management Office) - London with hybrid working. Up to £80,000 base with package on top worth up to £25,000.

A wonderful client in London are looking for someone to come in and head up their Portfolio Management Office and help drive a large internal restructure to centralise all PMO functions from IT, Estates and Professional Services. You will help define the strategy to incorporate other departments into the PMO function in the future.

The Central PMO will lead the Centre of Excellence across the client’s project management offering and will work collaboratively across the business units. It will introduce, standardise, and enhance economies of repetition in the execution of projects ensuring consistent delivery quality.

This role will assure the quality of delivery of the projects and programme ensuring they deliver these strategically important initiatives in a controlled manner to defined time, cost and quality criteria, as well as all operational programmes and projects. You will provide essential Management Information to the main stakeholders across all business units, including the Senior Executive Team, so that informed decisions can be made regarding delivery priorities and financial spend.

Role purpose

The primary objective of the Central PMO is to improve project delivery and increase the success rate of projects by standardising project management practices, tools, and processes. This helps to ensure that projects are executed consistently, efficiently, and effectively, while also reducing risk and increasing the return on investment.

The Central PMO will also be responsible for producing quality reporting to provide senior leadership with the right information at the right time to enable decision making and will be the central repository for the collection of key project and programme metrics (financial and qualitative) for all projects. Central PMO will use this information, along with regular project audits, to assure and report project health to the Senior Executive Team and other senior key stakeholders.

The Head of Central PMO will manage a team of PMO professionals across all business units to continually develop new and improved process, procedures, and controls to ensure effective resource allocation, financial reporting, dependency management, business case development and appropriate governance. They will provide strategic direction, framework, standards, and practices to enable the most important strategic programmes and projects are delivered in a consistent measurable way, assuring the quality of delivery.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain the overall PMO strategy in line with the organisational goals and objectives.
• Development of the PMO to ensure it becomes a "centre of excellence" for everything project and programme related and is regarded as such by other areas.
• Define project management methodologies, standards, and best practices for the organisation.
• Oversee project portfolio management to ensure alignment with business objectives and resource optimisation.
• Monitor project performance, risks, and issues, and ensure that appropriate corrective actions are taken.
• Develop and implement project governance processes and ensure compliance with organisational policies and standards.
• Working alongside the Strategy Planning Office, manage yearly planning activities and ensure that the appropriate information is provided to facilitate Senior Leadership decision making.
• Accountable for the coordination and standardisation of all project document templates, standards and processes across all departments.
• Spearhead creation and maintenance of PMO Charters and Service Catalogues for Central PMO and other departments.
• Define and implement appropriate Key Performance Indicator (KPI) metrics to quickly identify issues and performance of project and programmes.
• Lead development and implementation of automated systems to ensure speedy and efficient project status reporting and making available to senior level management without need for intervention.
• Lead the P3M3 assessment activities across various departments; managing the creation and actioning of plans to increase maturity.
• Lead on internal activities to deliver necessary information to external auditors.
• Management of quality assurance across all relevant departments.
• Lead the management of projects using the current project governance framework, supported by our portfolio management platform.
• Lead the execution of PMO governance across all departments.
• Oversee the management and execution of preparation activities for decision-making Boards across each business unit.
• Promotion, publication, and appropriate training of our governance framework.
• Co-ordinate and maintain the Portfolio Process framework ensuring that planned activities are managed and governed in line with best practice and ensure full and accurate transparency of the portfolio and its associated key performance metrics.
• Maintain full transparency of project and programme portfolio to identify governance requirements and change control to ensure appropriate governance activities can be initiated and approved by appropriate governance boards or groups.

What are we looking for?

• Demonstrable experience performing a Head of PMO role, or similar, delivering a portfolio of projects and programmes.
• Able to demonstrate success in the building and creation of a new PMO function.
• Proven understanding of project governance, risk, and planning.
• Have an attention to detail ensuring reports and data are accurate and presented in a professional manner suitable for Senior Executive level.
• Substantial experience of using Microsoft Project, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Visio.
• Ability to liaise with, develop and maintain meaningful working relationships with key stakeholders and other customers.
• Ideally already certified as a P30 Practitioner, also keen to see candidates with Prince 2 / MSP or similar.

This is a fantastic role with huge scope for the right candidate, offering a great benefits package on top of a competitive salary. If you would like to have an informal chat on this role please share your CV.