Senior Project Planner (Thunder Bay)

Our client's Project Team is looking for a Senior Project Planner resource to support this Portfolio. This role will be based in Calgary, with project locations in Alberta and BC. Minimal travel may be required. The project team works a hybrid schedule, with a minimum of 3 days per week in the office, with potential to be full-time in the office during the Execute Phase.

General Position Definition

Planning and scheduling activities during all project phases (Identify & Assess, Select and Define).

Purpose and Accountabilities

• Deliver and maintain consistent and realistic plans and schedule structures for small, medium, and major complex projects and their hierarchical relationships during the Assess, Select and Define phases.
• Drive, manage and ensure completeness of the development of activities, logic, resources, and progress for the integrated project schedule, leading to the creation of the baseline and its subsequent maintenance.
• Roll‑out, implement and ensure compliance with the Company standard tools and processes, as appropriate for each project's life‑cycle development phase. Maintain consistency in schedule bases through rigorous adherence to the controls processes.
• Develop competitive schedules and benchmarks for assigned projects for all pre‑DG3 project stages.
• Understand the importance of respecting nature and CO2 footprint on the projects and how planning can add value.
• Support the PSMs with competitiveness review data collection for schedule information, ensure gap‑to‑potential plans are called out in P6 schedules, and provide DCMT updates for assigned projects as needed.
• Assist in peer reviews and other assurance events. Coordinate with Planning TA2s in advance of PEER reviews, VARs/OVA to deliver strong project schedule assurance. Use the schedule checklist as a quality KPI and share with the team.
• Engage 3rd‑party PS teams regarding planning expectations for Project + PMF deliverables (no surprises).
• Facilitate interactive planning sessions for assigned projects.
• Assess impacts of changes on project targets, productivity, and milestones; engage with technical team, directors, and JV partners for scenario analyses.
• Craft comprehensive schedules spanning engineering and construction phases, from Level I to III, using integrated workshops for planning.
• Establish and deliver to a monthly reporting cadence for schedule status updates.
• Support what‑if schedule scenarios, summary schedules, decision roadmaps, critical path, trend analysis, float erosion, and S-curves.
• Support delivery of schedule‑management solutions for all types of projects.
• Generate accurate monthly schedule reports, highlight variances from the plan and establish schedule forecast.
• Maintain and promote realism in schedule forecasts in the face of commercial pressure and optimism from project teams.
• Instigate, develop, and police the planning and progress‑monitoring procedures to ensure that each element of the project performs the processes timely and consistently.
• Own the overall schedule monthly progress update, forecast, critical path and trend analyses. Develop status‑reporting framework and implement throughout the planning hierarchy. Provide regular and comprehensive schedule status reports to Project Management.
• Review scope change requests for the impact on schedules and the critical path of the project.
• Prepare reconciliation between earlier schedules and the current schedule, consolidate the impact of approved changes and any deviations from key project targets and milestones, including productivity monitoring and “what‑if” scenarios to aid project management decision‑making.
• Liaise with and challenge Senior Project Management and Engineering personnel to ensure proper understanding of key schedule sensitivities and drivers.
• Contribute to the development of contract strategies documents. Ensure that all contract key dates and milestones align with the overall integrated plan. Evaluate bid schedules and review contractor plans to support contract award recommendations.
• Contribute to the development of the project’s risk profiles and translate these into plans using deterministic and probabilistic analysis methods, as appropriate. Regularly track schedule‑risk mitigation efforts, the criticality of main paths to completion, float consumption, and the release of the 50/50 schedule contingency.
• Provide input data for and conduct benchmarking activities.
• Deliver close‑out data to enable knowledge retention (lessons learnt, project data compilation) at completion of work.
• Support development of models for schedule‑risk analysis and ensure the integrity of third‑party contractor schedules and plans.
• Conduct peer reviews and assure third‑party schedules, participating in estimate & schedule reviews and VARs.
• Advise the Project Services General Manager on various projects, including process improvement and gap analysis.

Skills and Requirements

• Hands‑on experience in project planning & scheduling in all phases.
• Excellent people skills and ability to communicate effectively. Majority of outputs involve assurance, extensive analytical work, and benchmarking, enhancing decision quality of leadership teams.
• Specialized in front‑end development of projects in any project controls role.
• Trained in using Primavera (P6) – Desktop & cloud version.
• Engineering degree and/or certification as a Project Planner or equivalent experience.
• Minimum 10 years’ industry experience, including lead/managerial positions in planning, risk management or cost estimation.
• Fully versed with planning & scheduling principles, techniques, and industry‑standard tools.
• Self‑driven, proactive individuals with high passion for continuous improvement and business mindset with ability to work with minimum supervision on a global platform.
• Ability to work across multi‑cultural and multi‑national environments.
• Prior experience in benchmarking is an added value.
• Excellent understanding of all phases of the project delivery process.
• Work experience as Planning Engineer in front‑end, Select, Define, and Execute phases. Experience in the operational phase is an advantage.
• Flexibility to the team, with direct experience in areas within Project Services but outside the traditional planning role. Self‑motivated, resourceful, and possessing good interpersonal relationships.
• Proven leadership skills and strong personal drive to meet deadlines and specific targets.
• Team player with transparent evidence of working with others to deliver on goals.
• Strong, demonstrated personal commitment to HSSE leadership and experience in managing HSSE throughout all project phases.
• Broad knowledge and experience of project engineering techniques, tools, and practices.
• Experienced with risk management and benchmarking.