Places Leisure - Central Project Manager

More about your role

You'll manage the delivery of refurbishment, modernisation and new facility projects from initial planning through to operational handover. You'll develop project plans, manage critical paths and coordinate activity across operational teams, clients, consultants, contractors and internal specialists. By monitoring milestones, budgets, risks and dependencies, you'll help ensure projects remain on track and facilities are ready to operate effectively.

As the main point of contact for key stakeholders, you'll lead project meetings, maintain effective project governance, provide clear progress reporting and proactively manage risks, issues and escalations to support timely decision-making. You'll also support launches and reopenings, track the benefits achieved following investment and work with operational teams to maximise customer participation, satisfaction and commercial performance.

Essential criteria

• Demonstrable experience of managing complex projects or programmes from planning through to delivery and operational handover.
• Experience of maintaining project plans, milestones and critical paths while managing risks, dependencies and competing priorities.
• Demonstratable experience of taking ownership of projects, managing delivery against agreed timescales, budgets and outcomes with a complex, multi-stakeholder environment
• Experience of facilitating project meetings and producing reports, governance documents and progress updates for senior stakeholders.
• Working knowledge of recognised project management principles or methodologies, supported by experience of analysing project information and recommending corrective action.

More about you

You're an organised and collaborative project professional who can build effective relationships and influence people across different teams and levels of an organisation. You understand how to balance operational, customer and commercial priorities, and you're comfortable making sense of complex project information to identify practical solutions.

You'll be adaptable and resilient, with the ability to remain focused when priorities change or delivery challenges arise. A formal project management qualification and experience of organisational change, service transformation or operational restructuring would be beneficial. Confidence using digital project management and reporting tools would also be an advantage.