Job Summary:

The Project Manager coordinates the entire project lifecycle, from initiation to closure, ensuring that all project goals are met on time and within budget. This role involves comprehensive oversight and collaboration of project planning, budgeting, resource allocation, and risk management. The Project Manager is responsible for overseeing sub-award execution, ensuring compliance, and maintaining strong relationships with sub-awardees. They coordinate the project team, provide strategic guidance, and ensure effective communication with all stakeholders. The Project Manager also ensures adherence to organizational policies, donor requirements, and legal standards, while overseeing monitoring and evaluation to incorporate lessons learned into future projects and plans. A key aspect of this role is proactive risk management to ensure the project’s success.

Accountabilities:

Project Management:

• Coordinates and ensures the development of projects from initiation to completion based on the established project scope, goals, and deliverables.
• Develops and manages the project workplan, assigns tasks in workplan in accordance to established project RASCI, and ensures overall progress
• Oversees documentation and reporting, ensures accuracy and presents updates to stakeholders
• Leads stakeholder communication, ensuring alignment and addressing concerns
• Develop and deliver a project workplan encompassing all the details of a project to the team members, including a project RASCI that clearly outlines the roles and responsibilities of every function within the project.
• Coordinate project team members to ensure project objectives and deliverables are met, fostering a collaborative work environment.
• Provide guidance and monitoring for project staff, ensuring clarity over project plans and priorities, and encouraging effective teamwork.
• Develops best practices and tools for project execution and management.
• Evaluates the progress of the project on a regular basis.
• Builds, develops, and grows partnerships with internal and external partners vital to the success of the project.
• Ensures budgets are reflective of the activities in the project workplan and reforecast as changes are made to the workplan and in alignment with the scope of the project
• Manages the operational and tactical aspects of multiple projects in a matrix environment.
• Manages the development of project teams to ensure compliance with policies and procedures; also, to develop and implement process improvement plans.
• Keeps abreast of the latest strategies, tools and terminologies used in project management worldwide to adopt and increase productivity
• Ensure proper donor and organizational approvals are obtained prior to work being completed.

Risk Management:

• Proactively identify potential risk that could impact project successes, including financial, operational, technical and external risks.
• Evaluate the likelihood and impact of identified risks and prioritize them based on severity
• Develop and implement risk mitigation strategies, including contingency plans to address potential issues before they arise
• Continuously monitor risks throughout the project lifecycle, updating the risk management plan and tracker as needed, and reporting on risk status to stakeholders
• Manages overall project risks and resolve any issues or risks that materialize, minimizing their impact on the project, and reporting on risks status to stakeholders.

Project Administration:

• Establish a communication schedule to update stakeholders including appropriate staff in the organization on the progress of the project.
• Develop a schedule for project completion that effectively allocates the resources to the activities.
• Review the project schedule with project senior management and project staff and revise the schedule as required.
• Execute the project according to the project plan.
• Author reports (ie deliverables) on the project for management and for funders.
• Communicate with funders as outlined in funding agreements; ensuring project management dashboard is updated accordingly
• Oversee the execution of sub-awards and consultants, ensuring all agreements are properly documented and aligned with project goals and donor requirements
• Leads sub-award design and is responsible for sub-award monitoring.
• Monitor sub awardees to ensure compliance with terms and conditions, including collaborating with finance manager on monitoring financial reporting, and performance obligations

Business Development and Proposal Management Support:

• Builds, develops, and grows partnerships vital to the success of the project and possible follow-on.
• Identifies partnerships, opportunities, and information to present to management to help achieve strategic goals of the company, project, and potential follow-on.
• Leads aspects of business development and project design efforts within division (such as drafting management section in a proposal), considering lessons learned from current projects.

Financial Management:

• Collaborate with the finance manager to determine the resources (time, money, equipment, etc.) required to complete the project.
• Collaborate with finance manager to monitor and approve all budgeted project expenditures in accordance with the workplan and what has been budgeted/forecasted; serves as backstop for approving financial expenditures.
• Collaborates with finance manager to ensure that all financial records for the project are up to date.
• Ensures financial reports and supporting documentation for funders as outlined in funding agreement.

Personnel Management:

• Coaches, mentors, and manages project officer, project assistant, and country program staff to ensure quality, efficiency and compliance with project and company
• Develop tools and techniques for delegating tasks according to the skills of project management office team member and also to evaluate the performance of project management office team members.
• Ensure that all project personnel receive an appropriate orientation to the organization and the project.

Applied Knowledge & Skills:

• Works independently and with other agencies to build local community acceptance.
• Comprehensive knowledge of concepts, practices, and procedures with project management, process development and execution.
• Strong knowledge of project management software and other technologies.
• Strong negotiator and problem solver.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills.
• Demonstrated project and personnel management skills.
• Ability to influence, motivate, and collaborate with others.
• Ability to adapt and resolve problems/issues to bring project to completion.
• Creating and Managing Systems and Processes.
• Recognizes the need for standardization and balances client and organization needs in systems design.
• Anticipates the effects of process change on people while optimizing task efficiency and simplicity.

Problem Solving & Impact:

• Decisions and actions have serious implications with delays in project schedules and operations and may affect overall business activities.
• Problems are complex and require analysis of situations and data with evaluation of a range of factors.
• Exercises judgment within broadly defined practices and policies to select methods and techniques to obtain results.

Supervision Given/Received: