project planner

Project Planner with the Home Office

(Full-Time, Permanent)

About Capita

At Capita, we support clients across a range of sectors, including local Government, central Government, education, transport, health, life and pensions, insurance and other private sector organisations. We support with expertise applied by the talent across our business in combination with technology, insight and analytics to keep our clients ahead of change, sharper than competitors and more efficient than ever – and we always need new talent to help us achieve our goals.

The Home Office

This role is an exciting opportunity for a dynamic and innovative person to be at the forefront of change in one of the great Departments of State. We are delivering significant transformation in order to continue keeping our citizens safe and our country secure. New technology and the fast-evolving nature of the threats we face mean we must adapt, and adapt fast, and with the UK leaving the EU, the need for change is greater than ever.

The Role of a Project Planner

The role of the Planner will cover a diverse range of activities to support the delivery of the project's objectives. The planner enables the smooth running of the project by supporting the Programme manager through the operation of project management processes, and the co-ordination of business management actions and activities on their behalf. 

Typical Role Responsibilities:

• Delivery and Leadership – Provide visible and effective leadership, lead the planning team and work with the project manager to deliver the business case benefits and outcomes. Develop clear vision and standards and champion the use of best practice project planning standards, tools and processes. Build strong networks both internally and externally.
• Project Planning – Apply advanced knowledge in the discipline of planning for the analysis and successful resolution of risks and issues and identification of opportunities.
• Resources – Identify future capacity and capability needs of the project planning function and puts in place strategies to meet them.
• Stakeholder Management – Build and maintain external networks to access technical and professional best practice.
• Project Performance and Controls – Analyse performance data, looking at trends to identify areas for improvement and collaboration, and selecting appropriate methods and tools to resolve them.
• Guidance and Support – Provide specialist advice and support to ensure successful delivery of projects.
• Provide guidance and advice to the Project Manager during project initiation on selection of planning approach, tools, processes and proportionality.
• Identify and lead the introduction of best practice planning processes, tools and templates, using industry standard best practice as a benchmark. Build planning capability.

Essential Criteria and competencies:

• Strong project planning experience gained within Central Government or Public Sector
• Experience in putting together dependencies (dependency mapping)
• Experience in overseeing the development and maintaining of project plans for large and complex programme
• Team management experience
• Excellent working knowledge of MS Project
• Experience working with high level of stakeholders (delivering presentations, influencing decisions, confidence, strong relationships building skills)
• Complete a diverse range of activities in a fast paced environment
• Planning and scheduling
• Monitoring and reporting
• Risk and issue management
• Stakeholder management
• Requirements management
• PRINCE2, APM PMQ, MSP or equivalent.
• Agile Methodology

Typical Qualifications and Professional Memberships include:

• Governance
• Assurance
• Change control
• Commercial awareness

Please note successful applicants will be expected to go through Security Clearance.