Lead Planner
Summary
the pitchJoin our team as a Lead Planner for a large, complex fusion energy program. You will be responsible for integrated planning across various workstreams, providing decision-quality schedule intelligence to senior leadership, and driving schedule governance. The ideal candidate will have deep technical knowledge of engineering, manufacturing, and construction program planning, as well as advanced program and project schedule management expertise. This position is based in West Burton with a hybrid work option.
Role
posted by companyJob Title: Lead Planner
Location: West Burton (Hybrid)
Salary Banding: £52,500-£75,000 (Dependant on experience)
We are actively recruiting on either a contract or permanent basis.
Description of job:
The Lead Planner will lead and be accountable for the planning and scheduling development for a large, technically complex fusion energy programme involving advanced engineering, multidisciplinary design, specialist procurement, manufacturing, high-accuracy construction, and commissioning phases with a value of circa £20M. The role ensures integrated planning across scientific, engineering, manufacturing, construction, and regulatory workstreams; provides decision-quality schedule intelligence to senior leadership; and drives schedule governance needed to deliver a first-of-a-kind fusion facility, safely, on time, and within budget. The ideal candidate combines deep technical knowledge of engineering, manufacturing, and construction programmes planning with advanced programme and project schedule management expertise. The Lead Planner will report to the Programme Planning and Delivery Manager.
Responsibilities:
- Support the development of sequenced design, manufacturing, construction, assembly, and commissioning plans.
- Support the development of multi-tier (L2–L4 schedule) capturing all Tokamak subsystems, engineering, manufacturing, construction, and programme phases deliverables.
- Identify critical paths, key dependencies, and resource requirement.
- Promote best practices in Programme and project planning, and reporting.
- Perform schedule simulations, “what-if” analyses, and scenario planning to support executive decision-making.
- Facilitate the development of WBS and work packages to support IPT and Programme deliverables.
- Coordinate baseline schedule updates, recovery plans, and forecasting.
- Monitoring progress using earned value management (EVM) and variance analysis.
- Analyse deviations from baseline and recommend corrective actions.
- Develop and maintain detailed resource-loaded schedules.
- Perform baselining, re-baselining, configuration control, and maintain full schedule audit history.
- Conduct continuous critical path analysis and identify near-critical paths across engineering, manufacturing, and construction programmes.
- Evaluate schedule impacts to change requests in programme deliverables.
- Lead and coordinate the alignment between Programme objectives, project plans, resource allocation, and deliverables.
- Work closely with project managers and delivery teams to define scope, milestones, activities, dependencies, and resource requirements.
Key responsibilities
- Lead and be accountable for the planning and scheduling development for a large, technically complex fusion energy programme.
- Support the development of sequenced design, manufacturing, construction, assembly, and commissioning plans, and multi-tier schedules.
- Coordinate baseline schedule updates, recovery plans, and forecasting, and monitor progress using earned value management (EVM).