Delivery Assurance/PMO Lead

Delivery Assurance/PMO Lead - BPSS Required - Outside IR35

We are seeking an experienced and detail-driven Delivery Assurance - PMO Lead Must have some PM experience to oversee the delivery management and governance of a complex, multi-workstream programme. The successful candidate will play a critical role in aligning planning activities, managing risks and dependencies, supporting senior stakeholders, and ensuring delivery against schedule, cost, and quality objectives. This role combines strategic oversight with hands-on delivery support, reporting into senior leadership and contributing to programme-wide success.

Key Responsibilities:

Programme Planning & Portfolio Alignment

• Build and maintain an integrated programme milestone-level schedule across multiple workstreams (7)
• Track and manage programme critical path, cross-functional dependencies, and milestones.
• Provide visibility and alignment of projects and change initiatives, ensuring mutual impacts are identified and managed.
• Maintain central delivery trackers and schedule key engagement events.

Stakeholder Engagement & Leadership Support

• Work closely with senior stakeholders to ensure alignment and awareness across business and technical domains.
• Develop high-quality, C-level communication materials (dashboards, packs, reports).
• Support programme leadership with insights, risk escalations, and decision-making inputs.

Risk, Dependency & Issue Management

• Lead strategic risk planning activities with various stakeholder groups.
• Maintain a consolidated risk register and update key delivery artefacts such as DAREOC on a regular schedule.
• Proactively identify and resolve planning issues and delivery blockers.

Governance, Assurance & Delivery Metrics

• Run periodic plan health checks and assurance reviews to identify delivery risks.
• Conduct delivery audits and produce delivery metrics to support governance.
• Identify and recommend process improvements to drive planning maturity and execution discipline.
• Liaise with Shared Services Audit & Governance to support compliance with internal standards and audit schedules.

Continuous Improvement & Workstream Enablement

• Mentor and support workstream leads and project managers to improve planning capability and delivery confidence.
• Conduct workshops to address planning gaps and improve delivery maturity.
• Lead deep-dive reviews on high-risk or underperforming areas to clear critical dependencies and unlock progress.

Required Skills & Experience:

Core PMO/Programme Delivery Skills

• Proven experience leading PMO functions or complex programme delivery in Matrix environments.
• Deep expertise in integrated planning, scheduling (at milestone and detailed levels), and critical path analysis.
• Strong understanding of portfolio alignment and enterprise change impact management.

Stakeholder & Communication

• Ability to build strong relationships with senior stakeholders and executive sponsors.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills; ability to distil complex information into clear, executive-ready outputs.
• Experience preparing and presenting content for governance forums, steering groups, and C-suite.

Governance, Assurance & Risk

• Strong knowledge of delivery assurance practices, PMO controls, and audit processes.
• Proficient in identifying strategic and operational risks, and managing issues to resolution.

Tools & Technical Proficiency

• Advanced skills in project and programme planning tools (eg, MS Project, Primavera, or equivalent).
• Experience using collaboration and reporting tools (eg, PowerPoint, Excel, Power BI, SharePoint, JIRA).
• Familiarity with risk and issue tracking tools; ability to implement and maintain delivery dashboards and trackers.

Behavioural & Leadership Attributes

• High attention to detail and strong analytical thinking.
• Credible and trusted partner to delivery and business leads.
• Self-starter with a proactive and solution-oriented mindset.
• Comfortable operating in ambiguity with a structured approach to delivery.
• Mentoring and coaching experience, particularly in elevating PMO and planning maturity.

Performance Metrics

• Integrated plan maintained and critical path actively managed.
• Risks, dependencies, and issues regularly reviewed and updated.
• Delivery artefacts (DAREOC, trackers, reports) produced on schedule.
• Governance forums supported with timely and accurate information.
• Delivery process issues identified with improvement actions implemented.
• Deep-dive interventions resolved blockers and restored momentum.

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