Job Description

Overview:
Role: Assistant Project Manager
Location: Derby or York - hybrid remote working
Role ID: 2023-2109


Our vision is to create a safe and sustainable world.
Ricardo plc is a global strategic, environmental, and engineering consulting company. With over 100 years of engineering excellence and employing close to 3,000 employees in more than 20 countries, we provide exceptional levels of expertise in delivering leading-edge and innovative cross-sector sustainable products and solutions. Every day, we enable our customers to solve the most complex and dynamic challenges to help achieve a safe and sustainable world.

The Role

We have an exciting opportunity for an Assistant Project Manager to join our consultancy team. The role is to work with our engineering teams to manage a wide range of projects, including budget setting and control, customer and supplier engagement, and identification and mitigation of project risks. In undertaking this role you will need to work autonomously, interfacing with clients, other members of the delivery teams and the management team.


You will also provide support to Group Leaders and Project Managers within the Ricardo Rail UK delivery team for the resourcing and delivery of projects, and will act as an end-to-end manager for a number of smaller projects within the portfolio, with project values between \xc2\xa310k and \xc2\xa31m.


For this role you will have several years\xe2\x80\x99 experience working in a similar role ideally, but not essentially, within the rail or professional service sectors. If you are an aspiring project administrator or established project manager with a strong passion for providing excellent service and looking for your next move, we\xe2\x80\x99d like to hear from you.


Key Responsibilities

• Manage a portfolio of discrete projects, implementing and promoting core principles such as scope management, resource planning, change control, risk, financial control and documentation management.
• Supporting the Project Managers in day-to-day project activities on other projects. For example, ensuring accurate budget and financial status information, cost forecasts, invoicing and purchase order management.
• Convert winning bids into live projects and create project budgets within our project management tool.
• Take responsibility for ensuring the project Estimate at Completion remains accurate throughout the project, with any project risks identified.
• Support Project Engineers in ensuring that risks are understood, considered and mitigated during both the production of project proposals and during the project lifecycle.
• Ensure any Health and Safety risk relating to the project is identified and managed.
• Build and maintain good client relationships through proactive communication and actions to fulfil client and business expectations.
• Provide a first level response to all emerging customer and supplier issues, engaging with subject-matter experts, where applicable, to ensure a high level of customer service.
• Support project management processes within Ricardo, developing and delivering best practice tools and techniques for effective and consistent ways of working.
• Identify, suggest and assist managers with implementing change and developments to the administration processes and procedures to meet future business demands and improve process efficiency.
• Identify and implement the correct authorisation route for each project and providing the required information in a timely manner.
• Identify, manage and input project opportunities, such as variations to contract or cost reduction opportunities, to support the Project Manager.
• Undertake the role of Bid Co-ordinator, as required.

Key Competencies and Experience

• Experience of working in a business / client services environment.
• Proven experience of managing small projects through the full project lifecycle including managing budgets against an estimate at completion, reporting current project status and providing outturn forecasts.
• Capability to quickly learn and proficiently operate Ricardo\xe2\x80\x99s project management (Changepoint) and Customer Relationship Management (Microsoft Dynamics) software tools.
• Flexibility and a results-oriented approach to meet varying and competing client and business demands.
• Versatility and adaptability with strong organisational skills to be able to work on multiple tasks and to tight deadlines.
• A proactive approach to problem solving with strong communication and diplomacy skills to negotiate and influence internal and external clients.
• An inquisitive nature, an eye for detail, and an ability to use own initiative.
• Excellent mathematical skills in relation to project budgets, costs and forecasting.
• Excellent English oral and written communication skills, including the ability to communicate with a range of internal and external stakeholders.
• Excellent Excel skills and proficient in the use of other Microsoft Office packages including Word, Project, and PowerPoint.
• Comfortable with travel within the UK and, on occasions, internationally in support of projects.

Desirable

• Knowledge of the Rail industry, including experience of delivering projects in the rail environment.
• Project Management qualifications e.g. PRINCE2 or APM.

Working here
You will be warmly welcomed into our workplace where every voice matters. We are diverse thinkers and doers, coming together to create a culture of inclusion. We will support you to find your place.


We will encourage you to use your passion and expertise to make a positive impact through the projects you work on. Your knowledge and desire to bring about change will be invaluable in helping deliver innovative solutions that support communities across the globe in becoming safer and more sustainable.


Work life balance
We offer flexible approaches to work, whether that is working from home, being in the office, or as a hybrid worker. We\'re happy to discuss flexible working arrangements. Wellbeing is at the core to our culture, allowing employees to flourish and to achieve their full potential.


Benefits
We want you to know how much you are valued. Your remuneration and benefits package will reflect that. You will receive a range of benefits which include support for your physical and mental health.


Our core benefits include 25 days\' annual leave, plus 8 flexible bank holidays, a competitive company pension scheme, life assurance and professional subscriptions reimbursement. We also offer a wide range of flexible benefits to suit your lifestyle.


Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion statement
We are an Equal Opportunity Employer, we believe in each person\'s potential, and we\'ll help you reach yours. We have an ambitious diversity, equality, and inclusion approach as explained here. We value diversity; recognising that a more diverse workforce creates a richer and more varied working environment. Diversity also drives innovation, by allowing us to offer our clients the best consultancy service that we can. As part of our commitment to engage positively and pro-actively with all our employees and to ensure an inclusive culture, we are a recognised as a \'disability confident\' employer.


Next steps
Once you have submitted your application a member of our Recruitment Team will be in touch. Please be aware that the timing can vary dependent on the volume of applications that we receive for each role and in some cases, we may start to review applications prior to the closing date.


Ricardo is a Disability confident employer please advise the recruitment team via recruit@ricardo.com if you require any adjustments to support you throughout the recruitment process.