Programme Planning & PMO Lead

Programme Planning & PMO Lead London (Hybrid 2 days onsite, 3 days at home) 6 -month contract 400 - 480 per day via UmbrellaThe Programme Planning & PMO Lead will provide comprehensive planning, governance, and delivery support across the programme lifecycle. This role ensures that integrated planning, governance processes, reporting, and risk management are consistent, controlled, and transparent to senior stakeholders. The postholder will work closely with the Programme Manager, Workstream Leads, and suppliers to keep the programme on track and continuously improve programme controls. Duties and responsibilities: Planning & Scheduling (40%) • Develop and maintain the integrated programme plan across all workstreams (business change, technology, Agile delivery), consolidating data from MS Planner, MS Project, JIRA, and supplier plans. • Re-baseline and optimise plans in response to scope changes, risks, or delivery shifts, ensuring alignment with programme objectives. • Integrate Agile delivery cycles with stage-gated governance, providing a single source of truth for dependencies, milestones, and critical paths. • Manage and track cross-workstream dependencies and milestones to inform risk mitigation and decision-making. • Lead impact assessments for change requests, reflecting effects on timelines, resources, and delivery sequencing. • Define and enforce planning standards, templates, and tool governance to ensure quality and consistency. PMO & Governance (40%) • Set up and maintain SharePoint sites, document libraries, and collaboration spaces to support programme delivery. • Establish and enforce governance documentation control, ensuring versioning, accessibility, and audit readiness. • Support change control administration, ensuring requests are logged, assessed, and approved in line with governance. • Provide quality assurance of deliverables, validating completeness, accuracy, and adherence to standards. • Facilitate continuous improvement, reviewing PMO processes and implementing efficiencies where needed. Stakeholder Engagement & Reporting (20%) • Coordinate with Programme Manager, Workstream Leads, and suppliers to ensure plans and reports are accurate and up to date. • Schedule and facilitate governance meetings, capture decisions and actions, and monitor follow-up progress. • Maintain risk, issue, and dependency logs, escalating items as required for timely resolution. • Produce status reports, dashboards, and executive summaries for senior stakeholders and governance boards. • Support resource and budget tracking against programme forecasts, flagging variances early. Qualifications, experience • Proven experience in programme planning and PMO leadership on complex, multi-workstream programmes. • Strong knowledge of planning tools (MS Planner, MS Project, JIRA) and integration of multiple data sources. • Understanding of Agile and stage-gated methodologies and experience aligning them within a single delivery • Excellent skills in risk, issue, and dependency management and stakeholder engagement. • High attention to detail, with the ability to produce accurate, insightful reports and dashboards for executive audiences. • Ability to design and optimise governance processes, improving efficiency while maintaining control.