Senior Planner & Scheduler

Job Overview

Job Description

Assignment Context
The assignment involves project health checks and recovery / stabilisation planning for a portfolio of major capital projects in the energy sector. Candidates will assess the quality, completeness and maturity of project deliverables supporting stage-gate decisions, including cost, schedule, scope, risk, procurement and delivery readiness. Outputs will include consolidated findings, root-cause analysis, actionable recommendations, recovery pathways, management interventions, performance optimisation measures and executive-level reporting.
Role Purpose
The organisation requires a Senior Planner / Scheduler to support project health checks and recovery planning for major energy-sector capital projects. The role will focus on reviewing schedule quality, schedule maturity, schedule logic, critical path, float, constraints, outage windows, interfaces and recovery options.
The assignment requires assessment of whether schedules are appropriate for the relevant project stage, whether they support governance decision-making, and whether schedule assumptions are consistent with scope, procurement, cost and risk information. The scope includes schedule management and adherence, schedule quality checks, integrated schedule development, QSRA support and schedule progress reporting.

Core Responsibilities
• Review project schedules for completeness, maturity, logic and suitability for the relevant project lifecycle stage.
• Assess whether schedule quality meets DCMA 14-point schedule quality check expectations or an equivalent schedule assessment standard.
• Review critical path, float, milestones, sequencing, dependencies, calendars, constraints and interface logic.
• Assess whether the schedule is aligned to scope, WBS, procurement strategy, long-lead items, design maturity, resource availability and delivery strategy.
• Develop or review integrated planning-level schedules structured around key work packages, outage windows and major interfaces.
• Document schedule assumptions, constraints and dependencies, including outage timing, outage duration, maintenance integration, access restrictions and interface conditions.
• Ensure schedules are suitable for risk analysis and governance review.
• Prepare schedule inputs for Quantitative Schedule Risk Analysis, where required.
• Assess whether schedule contingency is consistent with QSRA results and with the cost contingency approach.
• Identify schedule-related root causes of project underperformance.
• Develop practical schedule recovery and stabilisation recommendations.
• Support weekly or periodic schedule progress reporting.
• Support preparation of a programme in MS Project showing task durations, resources and reporting dates for the assignment.
Required Experience
• 8 12+ years’ experience in planning and scheduling on major capital projects.
• Mandatory energy-sector experience, preferably power generation, transmission, distribution, utilities, renewable energy, energy infrastructure or power plant projects.
• Demonstrated experience developing and reviewing integrated schedules.
• Experience with schedule quality reviews, including DCMA 14-point checks or equivalent schedule health assessments.
• Experience with critical path method scheduling.
• Experience reviewing schedule maturity for stage-gate or governance decisions.
• Experience with outage-based, brownfield, access-constrained or interface-heavy projects.
• Experience linking schedules to WBS, procurement, long-lead items, risk registers and cost estimates.
• Experience supporting schedule recovery or stabilisation planning.
• Experience preparing schedule narratives and progress reports.
• Experience supporting QSRA would be advantageous.
Required Qualifications
• Degree or diploma in Engineering, Construction Management, Project Management, Planning, Quantity Surveying or a related field.
• AACE PSP, PMI-SP, PMP, PRINCE2 or equivalent scheduling / project management certification would be advantageous.
• Primavera P6 and MS Project training or certification would be beneficial.
Required Tools Experience
• Primavera P6.
• Microsoft Project.
• Excel for schedule analysis.
• Deltek Acumen or similar schedule quality tools, where available.
• Primavera Risk Analysis, Safran Risk, @RISK or equivalent QSRA tools, where applicable.
• Power BI or dashboard reporting tools would be advantageous.

Energy Sector Requirement
Energy experience is mandatory. Candidates should have worked in power generation, transmission, distribution, utilities, renewable energy, energy infrastructure, industrial energy projects, plant outage, retrofit or maintenance integration projects.
Experience with outage windows, maintenance integration, access constraints and interfaces is particularly relevant.