Senior Manager: Stage Gage Assurance (PMO)

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Job Description:

The Senior Manager – Stage Gate Assurance – PMO is a vital governance leader responsible for building, maintaining, and enforcing the project delivery lifecycle framework. Acting as an independent gatekeeper, this role ensures that complex infrastructure, construction, and commercial projects are legally, financially, and technically ready to advance from one major phase to the next.

Rathan than overseeing daily project execution, this position focuses on protecting organizational capital by independently verifying that rigorous phase criteria are met before additional funding or resources are cleared for release.

Key Responsibilities

1. Stage-Gate Framework Design & Governance

• Establish, standardize, and continuously optimize the organization’s overarching project delivery lifecycle (e.g., scoping, design, business case, procurement, construction, and operational handover).
• Define mandatory deliverables, documentation, financial analyses, and compliance checklists required from delivery teams at each phase boundary.
• Set objective, standardized criteria for "Go, No Go" decisions to ensure executive leaders have absolute transparency over project viability.

2. Independent Phase Gate Reviews & Portfolio Auditing

• Execute independent, unbiased gate assessments of submitted project documentation to evaluate true timelines, costs, risk profiles, and alignment with corporate strategy.
• Verify foundational project components, including financial business cases, return-on-investment (ROI) models, risk registers, resource allocations, and regulatory permits.
• Evaluate project readiness for procurement and construction, flagging hidden cost overruns, scope creep, or schedule delays before major contracts are signed.
• Formulate recovery strategies and conditional approval paths when strategic priorities force a project to move forward with outstanding deliverables ("Proceed at Risk").

3. Committee Leadership & Executive Reporting

• Facilitate and lead Stage-Gate Review Committee meetings alongside executive sponsors, financial controllers, and senior technical directors.
• Present structured, data-driven recommendations to executive leadership regarding funding approvals, project holds, or the termination of low-value initiatives.
• Maintain rigorous audit trails, official sign-offs, and conditions of approval to guarantee long-term corporate accountability and governance integrity.

4. PMO Capability Building & Coaching

• Mentor, coach, and guide project managers and external consultants on phase-gate expectations to streamline the submission pipeline and minimize project bottlenecks.
• Use post-gate metrics and project closeout data to remove administrative bottlenecks, streamline approval loops, and elevate overall PMO delivery maturity.

Job Requirements & Qualifications

Education & Professional Credentials

• 
  Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering, Project Management, Finance, Business Administration, or a closely related professional discipline.
• 
  Master’s Degree or MBA with a focus on Project Controls or Operations Management is highly desirable.
• 
  Professional Certifications: Mandatory possession of at least one senior governance credential, such as Project Management Professional (PMP), Program Management Professional (PgMP), Portfolio Management Professional (PfMP), or Management of Portfolios (MoP).

Experience

• Minimum of 15+ years of progressive experience in PMO governance, project controls, portfolio management, or stage-gate assurance.
• Direct experience operating within mega-projects, major infrastructure developments, master-planned developments, or large corporate capital portfolios.
• Proven track record of auditing multi-million-dollar project business cases and holding delivery teams accountable to strict corporate standards.

Technical & Soft Skills

• Expert knowledge of project management methodologies (e.g., PMBOK, Prince2) and corporate governance frameworks.
• High proficiency in enterprise project portfolio management (PPM) systems and project controls software (e.g., Primavera P6, MS Project, or specialized PMO dashboards).
• Exceptional analytical skills with the ability to spot financial discrepancies, scheduling issues, and compliance gaps across massive datasets.
• Strong negotiation and stakeholder management skills, with a proven ability to confidently enforce governance rules with senior executives and delivery directors.

Parsons equally employs representation at all job levels no matter the race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age, disability or genetic information.

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