Project Manager- Software Upgrades

Service Description
Telecom requires experienced Project Management Services to manage Business Tools Telecoms projects through the entire project life cycle, whilst applying the fundamentals of good project management, e.g., safety, schedule, risk, and financial management etc.
Business Tools Projects involve the delivery of various Telecom Operations Systems projects including essential software upgrades on critical telecoms operational support systems (OSS) used for fault detection, investigation, and resolution by NR telecoms teams. These upgrades are essential because they are primarily driven by software vendors’ discontinuing support on older versions of their software. The remaining upgrades are enhancements to make NR telecoms’ fault management processes more efficient, or to reduce telecom’s fault reaction times. Example key applications include IBM API Gateway IBM Control desk(SCCD), IBM Netcool, Cramer and SolarWinds.
The services shall need to deliver outputs required by the client Standards, especially Project Acceleration in a Controlled Environment (PACE).
Key Deliverables
Project Delivery
• The Supplier shall take accountability and responsibility for the delivery of a number of projects under the direction of the NR Programme Manager to deliver high quality products, right first time and within timescale and budget and to a high level of quality.
• The Supplier shall form project teams consisting of the required specialists so that pragmatic and supportable solutions are delivered to our clients following NR standards.
• The Supplier shall take responsibility for delivering return on investment associated with the benefits case and technical compliance, involving the appropriate Project Commercial Manager as required.
• The Supplier shall deploy effective risk and issue management, and change control processes in line with company project management standards.
• The Supplier shall create project plans, identify the critical path, baseline the plans and track against the baselined plan at an appropriate frequency so that issues are identified and managed prior to affecting the critical path. This shall include effective management of dependencies with other projects or suppliers.
• The Supplier shall escalate issues to the Programme Manager or appropriate Commercial Manager in a timely manner, including contractual issues with suppliers.
Stakeholder Management
• The Supplier shall build and maintain relationships with business representatives and stakeholders so that expectations are managed, and requirements are benefits driven. The Supplier also act as the primary point of contact for the project or subproject and work closely with the client to manage issues and concerns.
• The Supplier shall regularly update sponsors and stakeholders on the progress of the project with clear, appropriate, and timely communications.
Supplier Management
• The Supplier shall take end to end accountability for the management of all suppliers and other third parties in terms of their deliverables to the project.
• Where supplier management is part of the project responsibility, the Supplier shall work with the Contracts & Procurement team to check that contracts and other formal documents are appropriate in terms of the allocation of risk and responsibility so that Network Rail does not duplicate supplier responsibilities while protecting Network Rail against supplier failure.
• The Supplier shall manage suppliers so that they deliver to time and budget and manage the process of dealing with supplier issued Change Requests. You’ll take advanced action to mitigate risks.
• The Supplier shall establish firm and trusted relationships with suppliers so that non contractual issues can be resolved quickly and amicably with the minimum of overhead.

Financial Management
• The Supplier shall manage project finances as required by Network Rail standards, including accurate and informed forecasting, authorisation of payment only on delivery, and accurate reporting of the project status and current financial position. The Supplier shall take appropriate and timely action where financial measures deviate from agreed tolerances.
• The Supplier shall manage changes to the deliverables or financials declared within the Investment Paper through the formal change control procedure.
• The Supplier shall be able to demonstrate to the Leadership and Financial teams that project costs are traceable to the project plan.

Reporting
Produce Weekly reports, which shall as a minimum include:
• Weekly successes (against plan, incl. commentary on variances).
• Plan for next week.
• Issues or risks opened, progressed, or closed in the week, incl. Interfaces, critical items, and current and potential problems.
• Up-to-date action log.
• A health status for key project milestones.

Produce 4-weekly reports by COP on Wednesday of Week 4 (of NR’s period calendar), which shall as a minimum include:
• NRT Project Status Report.
• Project Plan, incl. providing a summary of the critical path, and a schedule variance analysis, against the baseline in the Investment Paper and any variance in the period.
• Up-to-date Risk Register.
• Up-to-date Issues Register.
• Accurate finance forecasts and Cost of Work Done (COWD) for the Project(s), incl. PM, PE services contract(s), the delivery Works Contractor contracts and other internal/external Project workstreams.
• Commercial report (incl. contract change log, PO status and invoicing status) for PM, PE services contract(s), the delivery Works contractor contracts, and any other Project contracts.
• Maintain all document produced for the project, e.g. As-builts, design documents, testing documents, TQs etc under the project folder within the SharePoint site for the Business Tools Programme. All documents should include key parameters, e.g., author, date produced/approved, and document status etc.
Key skills required to deliver the service

Essential criteria for nominated Supplier
• Extensive experience of delivering projects in a project management capacity where the PM’s were directly responsible for all aspects of time, cost and quality.
• A proven track record of delivering multi?million-pound telecoms application upgrade projects.
• A practical understanding of PACE, CSM and CDM.
• Demonstrable experience of delivering single projects from inception through to operational handover and project closure.
• Accredited by a professional project management body (eg. APMP, Prince 2, MSP).
• Excellent interpersonal, management and communication skills.
• Excellent knowledge of programme and project controls processes and systems.
• Strong supplier management skills.
• Excellent understanding of business and investment case development.
• Proven experience in managing and developing teams to achieve high performance.
• Proven ability to work with senior industry stakeholders to understand their Requirements.
• Good Knowledge of Railway Telecoms Network, systems and capability.
• Excellent leadership, communication and commercial skills and extensive experience of delivering large, complex delivery projects.
• Some experience on working on the following key applications. Transmission network alarm systems(SolarWinds and Netcool), Trouble ticketing system (SCCD Control Desk), Telecoms asset and service inventory system (Cramer), OSS Application Integration system (API Gateway) and automation tools(Resolve).