Project Planner in Bristol

Location: Belfast; Birmingham; Bradford; Bristol; London Borough of Croydon; Leeds; Liverpool; Manchester; Nottingham; Newcastle upon Tyne; Portsmouth; Preston; Washington; Worthing; Telford; London Borough of Newham; Cardiff; East Kilbride; Edinburgh; Glasgow; Thornaby

Salary: 47,047 - 56,978 per year

Employment: Flexible

Category: Project Delivery Manager

Employer: HM Revenue and Customs

Job summary: Discover a career in your hands at HMRC. Whether you're seeking purpose, growth, or a workplace that gives you a true sense of belonging, hear from some of our employees as they share their story about what it’s really like to work at HMRC.

Are you a Project Delivery professional who enjoys turning complex delivery activity into clear, realistic and achievable plans? This is an exciting opportunity to join HMRC's Project Delivery community and contribute to transformational and business change projects.

As a planner, you will play an important role in helping projects, programmes and portfolios deliver their intended outcomes. You will work with project teams and stakeholders to develop and maintain robust plans and schedules, providing clarity on what needs to happen, when it needs to happen and how activities fit together. You will identify key activities, milestones, dependencies, constraints and resource requirements, and use planning information to monitor and report progress, developing insights and flagging risks to support effective decision-making throughout the delivery lifecycle.

You will also provide professional planning advice, constructively challenge assumptions and help teams identify opportunities to optimise delivery.

As a Planner, you will:

• Lead planning activity, working with project, programme or portfolio teams to develop and maintain credible, evidence-based plans and schedules that support successful delivery.
• Develop and maintain work breakdown structures and integrated schedules, identifying activities, milestones, dependencies, constraints, resources and key delivery outputs.
• Monitor and analyse progress against agreed plans, identifying slippage, risks, issues and opportunities, and providing clear information to support timely decision-making.
• Challenge planning assumptions and work with delivery teams to ensure plans and schedules are realistic, achievable and aligned with agreed outcomes.
• Support effective change control, assessing the impact of proposed changes to scope, schedules, resources and other agreed project or programme baselines.
• Identify opportunities to optimise delivery, including through resource smoothing, resource levelling and the rescheduling of activities.
• Provide professional planning advice and support, helping colleagues apply appropriate planning approaches, standards and good practice throughout the delivery lifecycle.
• Build effective relationships and professional networks, working with stakeholders and planning colleagues across HMRC to ensure planning and reporting requirements are understood and addressed.

Person specification: We are looking for an experienced planning professional who can bring structure and clarity to complex delivery activity. You will be comfortable working collaboratively with project and programme colleagues while also providing constructive challenge where plans, assumptions or delivery expectations need further consideration. You will be confident using planning information and data to understand delivery performance and support informed decisions.

Essential Criteria: You will need to demonstrate:

• Experience of developing, maintaining and controlling integrated portfolio, project or programme plans and schedules across the delivery lifecycle.
• Experience of developing work breakdown structures and identifying activities, milestones, dependencies, constraints and resource requirements.
• Experience of analysing schedule performance, identifying slippage, risks and issues, and using evidence to recommend appropriate action.
• Experience of applying effective change control to portfolio, project or programme baselines, including assessing the impact of proposed changes.
• Experience of using digital planning and scheduling tools, such as Microsoft Project, Oracle Primavera, ServiceNow or comparable applications.
• Experience of using planning and performance data to support informed decision-making and improve delivery outcomes.
• Evidence of influencing stakeholders, constructively challenging assumptions and providing credible professional planning advice within a complex project, programme or portfolio environment.

Desirable Criteria: A recognised project delivery or planning qualification, such as APM, PRINCE2, MSP, Agile or APMG Planning and Control, may be beneficial, but we are equally interested in the professional planning experience and skills you can bring to the role.

Behaviours: We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process: Working Together.

Technical skills: We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process: Technical Questions around Planning & Scheduling.

Benefits: Alongside your salary of 47,047, HM Revenue and Customs contributes 13,629 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. HMRC operates both Flexible and Hybrid Working policies, allowing you to balance your work and personal commitments. We welcome applications from those who need to work a more flexible arrangement and will agree to requests where possible, considering our operational and customer service needs. We offer a generous leave allowance, starting at 25 days and increasing by a day for every year of qualifying service up to a maximum of 30 days. Pension - We make contributions to our colleagues’ Alpha pension equal to at least 28.97% of their salary. Family friendly policies. Personal support. Coaching and development.