Project Manager/Programme Manager

I am writing to this application to see if you have any opportunities for a project/programme manager in the next several months. I am reasonably flexible with dates to move to Melbourne if the right opportunities exist.

I am currently enjoying a contract with HBOS (Halifax Bank of Scotland) as a programme manager for the infrastructure department for the Australia divsion of HBOS

The below email outlines my career development over the last year:

I have been managing the network, telecommunications and security portfolio. The portfolio consists of about 60 projects at any one time. This consists of pipeline projects, projects in initiation (Business Case) and WIP (work in progress). The portfolio projects range from $10,000 dollar projects to 7.5 Million. For the year 2007 I will be responsible for delivering about 70-80 Projects at a cost in excess of $10-15 Million. As the programme manager I am the delivery arm of projects, I am responsible for the initiation of infrastructure projects, and transforming to work in progress projects. I have a pool of mid level and senior level project managers who I allocate the projects to.

The PM's are responsible for the end to end management of the projects. The PM's will report weekly via a project status report and one on one interview, I am then responsible for collating the information and updating the high level plan (HLP). At any one time I have approximately 10 project managers reporting to me and 10-15 project owners who use me to transform there infrastructure requests/business cases into projects on the HLP.

My role also incorporates IT Governance insuring all correct project documentation is maintained, so I can work closely with the audit department. I am also responsible for monitoring project budget spend, hardware and software depreciation, invoicing and accrual accounting. I work closely with my project support officer to insure that we are not only spending the 2007 budgets, but the profit and loss (P&L) tables are prepared and passed to finance.

A key requirement of my role is to work closely with the project sponsors from the network, telecommunication and security departments to ensure that they delivering there work plans for the year. The departments have committed to spend an allocated budget, and it is my responsibility to spend the project budget. I task myself to drive the sponsors to provide the project initiation proposals, the business requirements and business cases. I then initiate the project, assign a project manager and engage all 3rd party vendors to deliver the work. I am responsible for spending the allocated 2007 budget according to finances projected spend plans.

Stakeholder management is key to the success of delivering the projects. My role requires me to form relationships with senior executives within the bank, create communication channels and visibility of all projects that executives may have a stakehold in. I deliver projects for a wide variety of stakeholders in Australia and the UK so it is important good management processes are developed in my role.

As a big organisation the Bank (HBOS) engages vendors (I.e. IBM, BT, CSC etc) to implement the technical deliverables of projects. The bank also has project technical staff that work in conjunction with the vendors. As the programme manager I will engage the vendors, provide appropriate purchase orders and documentation. I will engaged the project manager to organise the internal resources with all invoicing/timesheets to be collated by my project support team under my responsibility.

I also act as a point of escalation for the project managers for all projects on my portfolio. If projects raise an issue that they are unable to resolve, it is my role to escalate to the appropriate people. This requires me to approach project sponsors, business executives and chief managers to seek a resolution. I must maintain a professional relationship with senior members of the Bank however driving these individuals to be accountable for there projects. I also have close relationships with change management, insuring all projects have changes logged in advance so there is a forward schedule of change and therefore visibility. The Bank is a 24 hour environment; therefore changes to the systems are integral to the business success. My role is to work with change management so they have visibility of all projects that require system changes. It also requires me to escalate emergency changes to change management and communicating with all project stakeholders.

I have also worked as a project manager on some high profile projects with critical time constraints. For example the Western Australian government brought in legislation at the end of 2006 to move to Day light savings to come into alignment with the rest of Australia. I was the project manager responsible for delivering (changing) all HBOSA systems time source to come into alignment with government legislation. This required all system clocks on all HBOSA applications and systems to change at the same time on the same day. This required me to manage a team of approximately 100 technical resources to complete pre production testing, UAT/OAT testing and the production changes. The project delivered all changes and no systems were affected therefore the business and the customer experienced no problems as a result of the significant change.

Previously to commencing my contract with HBOSA I was contracting in London for the last 4 years as project Manager. I am currently looking a moving to Melbourne in the near future