Description : Project Office Manager. Company : RCL FOODS Careers. Location : Westville, KwaZulu-Natal

Job Description

RCL Foods is currently seeking a Project Office Manager to join our Vector Logitics Division. The role will be based in Westville and report to the Supply Chain and Commercial Director.

RCL Foods entrusts the Project Office Manager to:

• Establish, implement, develop, and control best practices for project management throughout the organisation. This includes defining and documenting all policies and processes of project lifecycles in order to deliver these projects according to plan and within budget.
• Create formal methodologies for defining project key performance metrics and allocating resources.
• Oversee the coordination of multiple projects thereby ensuring that timing, risks, issues, resource requirements, etc. are dynamically managed across all projects.
• Monitor and report project statuses.

Duties & Responsibilities

Strategic Framework and Planning

• Formulate and circulate the Vector guidelines/policy framework regarding project management and the role of the project management office.
• Ensure that all project processes are documented.
• Develop best practices, techniques, and tools for project planning, execution, project management, ongoing milestone/deliverable tracking, communication, and key performance metrics.
• Maintain the project management framework for the Company, including managing the paper-based and electronic repository of up-to-date project procedures, templates, benchmarks and guidelines.
• Monitor performance of projects against key strategic and operational indicators and ensure that any weaknesses are investigated and proper control measures established.
• Define how the scope, goals, and deliverables of projects should support business goals, in collaboration with senior management.
• Effectively communicate to and manage project expectations of project managers, owners, sponsors, team members, and other stakeholders in a clear and concise fashion.
• Determine the frequency and content of status reports from project managers, analyse results and troubleshoot problem areas/mitigate project risks.
• Participate in business strategic and budgetary planning processes; provide recommendations on policies and goals desired; and drive the implementation of new/revised programmes according to established guidelines.

Operational Management

• Effectively coordinate multi-disciplinary project teams’ time and allocate resources to ensure deliverables are completed.
• Assess and approve/disapprove the need for additional staff or consultants and make the appropriate appointment if necessary during the project’s lifecycle.
• Coordinate the development of all projects within the PMO portfolio from beginning to end.
• Review budget proposals, and recommend subsequent budget changes where necessary.
• Track and monitor all project milestones and deliverables using appropriate tools.
• Identify and manage project dependencies and critical paths.
• Accept and assess status reports, change requests, and requirements documentation to ensure smooth project progression.
• Conduct project post mortems and create a recommendations report in order to identify successful and unsuccessful project elements.
• Coach, mentor, motivate, and supervise new project team leads, team members, and contractors, and influence them to take positive action and accountability for their assigned work.
• Identify and resolve issues and conflicts within and between various project teams.
• Provide direction to project teams including overseeing the assignment of individual responsibilities, tasks and technical functions.
• Lead and coordinate project update meetings, and document project status and issues.
• Apprise the Steering Committee of all projects’ status, issues and concerns.
• Act as the key liaison across all functional areas, including business units, information technology and outside vendors.
• Possess a broad knowledge of most technical and business resources and use them to effectively coordinate team members and external resources.
• Support project initiatives, including identifying and analysing preliminary business needs, budget considerations, time and resource estimates, defining the project scope and objectives, and getting business user sign-off.
• Supervise and lead the programme and project staff to oversee the impacts and interdependencies between programmes and work to ensure initiatives meet the strategic objectives of the executive leadership team.
• Ensure the project administration such as team communications, procedural controls (eg documentation control, issues control), filing, organising meetings, tracking whereabouts of participants, obtaining facilities, services and materials is undertaken.
• Ensure the correct classification of projects.
• Ensure that all active projects have a project sponsor, project owner, project customer and project manager and have appropriate business resources assigned to the project.
• Where appropriate, ensure essential project documents are completed and appropriately circulated and safeguarded
• Manage and direct multiple medium to large-scale projects.
• Work on complex problems where analysis of the situation or data requires an in-depth evaluation of various factors to achieve best results.
• Work effectively with internal and external clients, third party vendors and Senior Management in accomplishing project objectives.
• Develop and maintain lessons-learned inputs in the project repository for utilisation on future projects.
• Resolve political, resource, budgeting, change and legal issues affecting the programme/project.

Technical Expertise

• Provide both verbal and written communications regarding project status, risks, and issues, and make recommendations on project decisions to Executive Management.
• Serve as subject matter expert, providing technical and analytical guidance to the programme and project teams.

Financial Management

• Manage the Programme budget across all projects included in the programme.
• Collaborate with the finance team and various functional managers to ensure project budgets are properly estimated and controlled; provide overall financial recommendations and develop controls and measurements to monitor progress.
• Provide Finance with monthly accruals and forecasts by the due date established by Finance using the tools developed by the PMO in collaboration with Finance.
• Maintain current statements of work for all contractors; track and approve contractor invoices in a timely manner.
• Provide regular updates to the IT Director and the steering committee, project sponsor and stakeholders on the status of the budget.
• Document reasons for budget excess or shortfall.

Risk Management

• Proactively identify risks and opportunities of both business and technical plans; identify risk mitigation strategies and contingency plans for all identified risks.
• Maintain the programme-level issue and risk matrix log.
• In conjunction with the project sponsor, provide a detailed plan of how project risk will be managed or eliminated.
• Provide a weekly programme level status report with major risk factors when the mitigation approach impacts the project timeline, budget or objectives.
• Coordinate the risk management plan and risk mitigation strategy across all projects within the Programme/Project Office and manage the execution within the individual projects.

Team Coordination and Self-Management

• Supervise contracted PMO staff against assigned activities, responsibilities and deliverables.
• Continue professional development through attendance at meetings, professional seminars and conferences.
• Take ownership and accountability for tasks and activities and demonstrate effective self-management in terms of planning, prioritising and self-development.
• Inform relevant parties in the event of tasks or deadlines not met, the potential risks thereof and provide appropriate resolution.

Minimum Requirements

• Minimum of a undergraduate degree or diploma in Information Technology or Business Management
• Accredited project management certificate would be preferred
• A minimum of 7 years’ experience in programme management and the execution of multiple related projects simultaneously, particularly as Project Manager with working knowledge of the project management lifecycle
• Previous technical project management experience in a dynamic high-technology environment would be advantageous
• Valid Code EB drivers' licence