Lead Planner

Stopford are recruiting for a Lead Planner to join the team to work with highly skilled professionals who are constantly striving to deliver excellence and best practice.

You will be based at our office in Knutsford with the opportunity for hybrid working. There may be occasional travel required to other offices and client offices. This is a full-time permanent position, and in return, you will receive a competitive salary.

Stopford’s business activities are at the forefront of the energy transition and together with our clients and partners, we are playing our part in tackling the biggest challenges of our time: Energy Security; Environmental Sustainability and Energy Affordability.

The Lead Planner role:

Reporting to the Lead Project Manager or Project Group Director, the Lead Planner shall be responsible for managing the project control resources required to deliver cross functional engineering projects. You will be responsible for supporting the project management team with progress reporting including schedule updates, forecast to complete costing, variance identification and opportunities for improvement.

Key Responsibilities of the Lead Planner include:

• Management of the Planning team and also supporting cost engineering function including supporting and mentoring less experienced team members.
• Providing project controls management, including baseline schedule development and management, performance status and reporting, baseline change control, risk management, earned value management guidance and tools.
• Advising on the application of effective planning techniques and controls (earned value, cost and schedule variance, estimates at completion, critical path analysis).
• Supporting programme integration, formats, plan optimisation, and project controls best practices.
• Supporting and advising on the definition of Project Controls and Earned Value Management policies, procedures and the standards required to deliver projects.
• Supporting the development of integrated master schedules for specific programmes in Primavera and/or Microsoft Project that reflect all interface milestones and activity durations, into the integrated master schedule.
• Ensuring the Project controls team produce weekly / monthly reports in line with the project and company reporting calendar, providing details on progress, actuals, forecast and explanation of variances.
• Reviewing, developing and ensuring that project controls processes are consistently applied across the project.
• Ensuring robust cost and schedule performance for the agreed Scopes of Work across integrated programmes managed across multiple suppliers.

Role requirements for Lead Planner include:

• Ideally educated to degree level.
• Considerable experience in setting up and monitoring of plans, schedules and WBS.
• Considerable experience of working in a design, engineering and construction environment at FEED and PMC / EPC(M) phases of the project.
• Considerable knowledge and experience of project controls, estimating, planning/scheduling, progress measurement, forecasting/ reporting.
• Practical ability to utilise critical project management concepts including EVM, project planning and cost risk analysis.
• Excellent working knowledge of Primavera P6 and Microsoft Project.
• Considerable experience and understanding of estimating and benchmarking.
• Good interpersonal and collaborating skills.
• Experience of in working in and managing multi-discipline teams.
• Clear and concise communication in both written and verbal form with excellent people management and interpersonal skills.
• Good knowledge of Office 365 including One Drive and SharePoint with proficient use of Word and Excel.
• Eligible to live and work in the UK.
• Full UK/EEC driving licence.

Desirable

• APM, AACE or ACostE qualified with ongoing CPD.
• Good knowledge of Microsoft Power Automate, Power Bi and other task automation tools.

Security Clearance

The successful candidate must be able to achieve and maintain security clearance of at least Security Check level (SC clearance) for this role.

About Stopford

Founded in 1982, Stopford is an international multi-disciplinary consultancy, engineering design and project management services company. We are an industry leader with a portfolio spanning research and development through to design and commissioning of process plant. With a worldwide clientele in emerging and existing industries in the Clean Energy Sector. Our ambition is to lead the way in engineering a sustainable world through the transition to a low carbon economy.

Benefits

• Competitive salary
• Profit related bonus payment (10%)
• Pension (5% employer and 5% employee)
• 25 days holiday plus bank holidays
• Additional day off to celebrate your Birthday
• Private medical insurance
• Employee assistance programme
• Free on-site parking
• Reimbursement of professional membership fees
• Long service awards

Please go to our website for a full job description to familiarise yourself with all of the responsibilities, skills and experience required before you apply.

Please note that we do not accept applications from agencies, and you must be eligible to live and work in the UK with no restrictions.

We look forward to receiving your CV for the post of Lead Planner.

Closing date: 5th October 2025

Stopford reserves the right to bring forward the closing date if we receive a suitable number of quality applications from which to make a shortlist. Therefore, we would recommend that you apply as soon as possible.

Please note that due to the volume of applications we receive we are unfortunately not able to respond to each applicant. If you have not been called for interview within 3 weeks of the closing date, you should assume that on this occasion your application has been unsuccessful.