Project Controls Director

Overview

The Project Controls Director directs and oversees the organization's regional portfolio of projects, ensuring that projects are completed on time, within budget, achieving the energy outcome, and to the satisfaction of the customer. Embedded within the IS-Delivery project leadership team, the Director is responsible for leading the execution and performance of Project Controls across the assigned regional portfolio. The Director partners with Operations, Engineering, Finance, Project Management, and Project Controls personnel to ensure and deliver project outcomes through disciplined cost management, scheduling, forecasting, risk management, change management, energy performance management, and planning.

This is a working role, in addition to a managerial role. The Director actively engages with project teams to identify emerging issues, lead corrective and recovery actions, improve predictability, and strengthen project and portfolio performance. The Director provides leadership and accountability for the quality, consistency, and effectiveness of Project Controls execution within the enterprise framework established by the Vice President of Project Controls.

The Director leads the development of a proactive, ownership-driven Project Controls culture within the assigned region. Through coaching, mentoring, and leadership, the Director develops Project Controls professionals into commercially aware and results-oriented members of project leadership teams who anticipate risks, challenge assumptions, drive informed decision-making, and contribute directly to successful project outcomes.

Responsibilities

Project Leadership, Team Integration, and Project Setup

• Serves as a standing, active member of regional project leadership teams, participating directly in project decision-making and sharing accountability for project financial, schedule, and execution outcomes.
• Partners with Regional SVPs to establish and oversee the Project Controls teams assigned to each project, ensuring resources are appropriately aligned, integrated into project leadership teams, and focused on driving successful project outcomes.
• Leads cross-functional engagement among Supply Chain, Engineering, Pre-Construction, Project Management, and Project Controls to transition conceptual planning into executable project plans, ensuring alignment of scope, schedule, cost, risk, and resource requirements.
• Establishes and manages project performance expectations, ensuring accountability, transparency, and alignment among project stakeholders throughout the project lifecycle.
• Embeds Project Controls professionals within project teams as integrated project leaders rather than detached service providers, holding them accountable for proactive leadership, informed decision-making, and project performance improvement.
• Actively engages at the project level to diagnose challenges, facilitate resolution of issues, drive corrective and recovery actions, and support project teams in achieving cost, schedule, forecast, and operational objectives.
• Fosters a collaborative, ownership-driven culture in which Project Controls personnel challenge assumptions, anticipate risks, and contribute directly to project success.

Cost Management, Financial Performance, and Forecasting

• Accountable for cost management, financial performance, and forecasting across the regional portfolio, including budgeting, cost control, commitment tracking, productivity analysis, cash flow management, cost trending, variance analysis, annual budgeting, and Estimate-at-Completion (EAC) development; consolidates project-level time-phased spend into regional annual forecasts and EACs, ensuring their accuracy, timeliness, integrity, and defensibility.
• Partners with Project Management, Engineering, Operations, and Finance leadership to translate cost, forecast, and performance data into actionable insights and corrective actions that protect project value, support margin objectives, and improve business performance.
• Leads the regional forecasting and reforecasting process in accordance with enterprise standards, ensuring forecast assumptions, risks, opportunities, and performance drivers are understood, quantified, documented, and effectively communicated.
• Provides clear visibility into changes in project and portfolio performance trajectories, enabling informed decision-making by project, operational, and executive leadership.
• Establishes and reinforces a proactive forecasting culture that identifies potential performance changes early, allowing timely corrective actions before impacts are materially realized.
• Drives consistency, accountability, and forecast discipline across all projects within the regional portfolio while ensuring alignment with enterprise Project Controls standards, methodologies, and reporting requirements.

Schedule Management

• Lead the development, integrity, and active management of project schedules, including critical path analysis, resource loading, milestone management, and schedule recovery.
• Engage with project teams to pressure-test schedules, identify risks to key milestones, and develop actions to protect delivery dates.
• Responsible for verifying regional scheduling practices comply with enterprise standards and provide reliable information for project decision-making and driving corrective action when practices are not aligned.

Risk Management

• Responsible for the identification, assessment, quantification, and active management of cost, schedule, resource, and execution risk across the regional portfolio.
• Accountable for ensuring risk and opportunity registers are maintained with clearly defined exposure, ownership, mitigation actions, and potential impacts.
• Partner with project teams to develop and monitor mitigation, contingency, and recovery strategies.
• Promote the appropriate use of deterministic and probabilistic risk methods based on project needs and enterprise requirements.

Change Management

• Accountable for disciplined change management so that scope changes, trends, claims, and potential impacts are proactively identified, evaluated, documented, approved, and reflected in cost, schedule, and forecast.
• Accountable for ensuring change is managed as a commercial and contractual lever that protects project value, not merely as an administrative logging exercise.

• Partner with project leadership to improve the timeliness, quality, and accountability of change identification and resolution.

Energy Management

• Responsible for ensuring that energy production, savings, performance commitments, and related economics are incorporated into cost, schedule, risk, and forecasting processes.
• Partner with project and technical leaders to identify performance variances and support corrective actions that protect contractual commitments and project economics.

Planning & Project Setup

• Accountable for project planning, execution planning, and startup of each project that includes the coordination of support functions, including preconstruction, supply chain and estimating. The outcome is the development of a baseline schedule, engineering packages, the WBS, preliminary TPS and ultimately the Execution Plan prior to Commercial Close that can controlled and led from day one and maintained through the end of the projects.
• Actively shapes proposals and project startups so that controllability and accountability are built in from the outset.

• Accountable for ensuring project setup aligns with enterprise standards and is appropriately scaled to project size, complexity, and risk.

Interface with Operational Finance

• Serves as the primary Project Controls interface to Operations Finance, partnering on revenue recognition, margin, cash, reforecasting, and month-end alignment between project controls and the financial ledger.
• Responsible for driving timely resolution when project forecasts, operational expectations, and financial reporting do not align.
• Provide the Vice President of Project Controls with regional insights on material financial trends, risks, and opportunities.

Reporting and Performance Analytics

• Lead regional reporting, dashboards, and KPIs as tools that drive action, accountability, and informed decisions rather than as the end product of the function.
• Conduct trend and performance analysis to anticipate issues, surface opportunities, and recommend corrective actions across the regional portfolio.
• Ensure regional reporting follows enterprise definitions, standards, and reporting cadence established by the Vice President of Project Controls.

Team Leadership, Culture and Talent Development

• Lead, mentor, and develop regional Project Controls managers, schedulers, cost engineers, and analysts, strengthening both technical capability and leadership behavior.
• Reinforce a proactive, ownership-driven culture that positions Project Controls personnel as integrated project leaders.
• Support hiring, retention, succession planning, staffing strategy, and resource allocation within the assigned region.
• Implement the organization design, leadership expectations, and talent priorities established by the Vice President of Project Controls.

Standards, Tools, and Continuous Improvement

• Implement and champion the enterprise Project Controls standards, procedures, tools, systems, and methodologies established by the Vice President of Project Controls.
• Monitor regional adoption and execution, address gaps, and provide recommendations for enterprise improvement based on project and portfolio experience.
• Drive regional continuous improvement through technology, automation, analytics, and proven Project Controls practices.
• Support enterprise strategic initiatives and coordinate with the peer regional Director to promote consistent execution across ISD West and ISD East.

Qualifications

Required Education, Experience, and Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Construction Management, Project Management, Business, Finance, or a related field preferred. Candidates without a bachelor's degree should possess an additional 4-5 years of relevant project controls experience in lieu of formal education.
• Minimum 12-15 years of progressive project controls experience in engineering, commercial construction, industrial, energy, utilities, infrastructure, or related industries.
• Minimum 5 years of leadership experience, with demonstrated ability to lead and influence from within a project leadership team - not solely managing a standalone controls function.
• Demonstrated ability to drive project outcomes, lead corrective and recovery action, and build a proactive, ownership-driven team culture (change-agent experience strongly preferred).
• Strong business and commercial acumen, including margin management, revenue recognition, EAC and annual forecasting, and interface with an operations finance organization.
• Advanced knowledge of project scheduling software (Primavera P6 preferred) and cost management systems.
• Strong command of budgeting, forecasting, earned value management, schedule analysis, risk management (deterministic and probabilistic), and change management.
• Experience managing large capital projects and project portfolios; healthcare, energy, or regulated-environment experience a plus.

Preferred Education, Experience, and Qualifications

• N/A

Travel Requirements

• Up to 25% of time will be spent traveling to project sites, client locations, regional offices, and company facilities to support project execution, embedded project controls leadership, client engagement, and business operations.

Physical/Work Environment Requirements

• Prolonged periods of sitting at a desk and working on a computer.
• Climbing stairs.
• Remaining in a stationary position, often kneeling, standing or sitting for prolonged periods.
• Repeating motions that may include the wrists, hands and/or fingers.
• Quiet environment.
• Light work that includes adjusting and/or moving objects up to 20 pounds. Operating motor vehicles.

Pay Range

USD $134,430.00 - USD $179,380.00 /Yr.