About the Role
Large projects rarely fail because of one dramatic issue. More often, delays and cost pressures build gradually through missed milestones, incomplete information, changing requirements, and risks that were identified too late.
As a Project Controls Specialist, you will help keep complex projects visible and measurable by maintaining schedules, monitoring costs, tracking risks, and preparing performance information for project teams and decision makers.
The role sits between planning, finance, engineering, and project delivery. You may spend one part of the day reviewing schedule progress and investigating a delayed milestone, then move on to updating forecasts, analysing cost movements, or preparing a dashboard showing where a project needs attention.
Key Responsibilities
- Maintain project schedules, milestones, and activity plans.
- Monitor actual project progress against agreed baselines.
- Identify schedule delays and highlight activities affecting critical delivery dates.
- Support preparation of project cost forecasts and expenditure reports.
- Track committed, forecast, and actual project costs.
- Maintain risk and opportunity registers.
- Support quantitative and qualitative project risk reviews.
- Prepare regular project performance dashboards and reports.
- Analyse schedule, cost, and performance information for emerging trends.
- Maintain change-control records and track approved project changes.
- Support earned value and other project performance measurement techniques where required.
- Coordinate information from engineering, commercial, procurement, and delivery teams.
- Maintain accurate project-control databases and reporting systems.
- Assist with monthly project reporting and forecasting cycles.
- Track actions arising from project reviews and governance meetings.
- Support development of recovery plans when milestones begin to slip.
- Prepare information for programme and portfolio reviews.
- Monitor dependencies between different workstreams.
- Assist with establishing project baselines for new work packages.
- Improve reporting templates and project-control processes where opportunities are identified.
What We Are Looking For
- Previous experience in project controls, project planning, PMO, cost control, scheduling, or project analysis.
- Experience working within engineering, infrastructure, construction, defence, utilities, or another project-based environment is preferred.
- Strong numerical and analytical skills.
- Good working knowledge of Microsoft Excel.
- Experience with Primavera P6, Microsoft Project, Power BI, or similar project-control tools would be advantageous.
- Understanding of project scheduling and milestone management.
- Familiarity with cost forecasting and project performance reporting.
- Experience maintaining risk, issue, or change registers would be beneficial.
- Strong attention to detail when working with project data.
- Ability to communicate complex project information clearly.
- Good organisational skills and confidence handling several reporting deadlines.
- Relevant project management, planning, engineering, or commercial qualification would be advantageous.
Competencies
- Project controls
- Project scheduling
- Cost control
- Forecasting
- Risk management
- Performance reporting
- Schedule analysis
- Change control
- Project dashboards
- Primavera P6
- Data analysis
- Programme coordination
Working Approach
You prefer to identify a problem while there is still time to do something about it. You look beyond headline percentages and investigate what is actually driving a delay, cost movement, or performance change. Your reporting is concise, evidence-based, and designed to help project teams make decisions rather than simply record what has already happened.
Pay: £3,500.00-£4,000.00 per month
Work Location: In person
