Central Project Manager

Job Title

Central Project Manager

Business environment
Professional Services are considered a strategic growth lever for Airlines with an ambition for significant business growth, while introducing new ways of working compliant with this type of activity. As it is a very different business model from product industry, new practices and management routines must be put in place and operated to meet very stringent objectives in terms of P&L (revenue, costs, margin), capacity management (forecasts, budget and headcount), business development, service offer and delivery management (customer satisfaction, risks, commitment)

Purpose of the role

In his/her position the Central Project Manager works in close collaboration with

• Service train leadership team,

• Head of competency centers

• Competency center head of engineering,

• Delivery managers,

• Project or program managers,

• Account managers

In his/her role the Central Project Manager follows the delivery execution of the contracted commitments. The monitoring of the competency centers and service projects deliveries aims at managing

• Delivery risk with impact on the P&L (Profit & Loss : cost and invoicing)

• Capacity planning vs the committed capacity

• Customer demand to arbitrate capacity increase / decrease / assignment to align with that demand

• The engagement P&L (cost and invoicing)

• Customer satisfaction

In his/her role he will establish the operational forecast for the service engagements (contracts) he is looking after: forecast in cost, forecast in invoicing, forecast margin. He/she will contribute to consolidate the yearly budget for the service engagements in his/her scope, to evaluate invoicing targets and required budget in cost for the planned resources.

Based on his project management skills, the Central Project Manager will support, coach and drive that the head of competency centers, head of engineering, delivery managers, project or program managers focus their delivery management on securing the contracted service delivery commitments to the customer and realize the expected margin from the business case.

He will have a coaching role to drive delivery mindset shift in taking accountability for the service business typical challenges.

In his/her role he will contribute to the service “new operating model”, implementing the defined governance to manage service business execution in a SAFe framework:

• Run and manage regular operational forums for a portfolio of engagements (contracts)

• Escalate risks, opportunities, arbitrations, impact on the P&L to the Service Portfolio Sync

When well established and integrated with the customer interface team (head of competency center, head of engineering, account manager, delivery manager), the Central Project Manager may drive

• Actual invoicing and forecast invoicing, to foster anticipation

• Service reviews with the customer (effort spent in relation to the invoiced capacity)

• Support the team in developing and proposing mitigation actions in the relation with the customer

In his/her role the Central Project Manager may be in situation to support the established team in a pre-sale phase to

• Understand the customer pain points and problem statement

• Contribute to the delivery model definition

• Contribute to the commercial model definition and commercial proposal

• Validate the business case against the service guardrails (expected margin…)

• Contribute to the proposal presentation to the customer

In this role you’ll:

- Maintain the delivery dashboard for the service projects assigned to him/her, in collaboration with the head of competency center, delivery manager or project manager

- Drive and coach the head of competency centers or project managers to endorse accountability on the service business drivers

- Support the sales account teams in the commercial proposal construction to sign a new competency center or contract renewal with the airline. Collaborative Issuance of commercial proposal validated by service and/or the deal desk 

About the ideal candidate

• 5-10 years’ experience working in a Project Management role

• Experience in customer interfacing position, developed sensitivity to business stakes

• Experience in supporting pre-sales teams

• Experience with software delivery life cycle principles

• Experience in travel/tourism industry

• Microsoft Office skills including Outlook, Excel, Powerpoint

• Toolin