University of Warwick Hiring for Project Support Officer Job at United Kingdom Full Time

Permanent position, 36.5 hours per week.

By 2030 the University of Warwick will be one of the world’s exceptional universities, helping to transform our region, country and world for the collective good. We know we can only achieve this by delivering our technical and non-technical stabilisation, foundation and transformation projects on time and to high standards. We’re also keen to lead the industry with our standards, processes and practices. Our expanding Portfolio Management Office, part of the Strategic Change team in the Information & Digital Group, is currently designing and implementing new ways of working for a newly merged team of Project Managers, Business Analysts, Business Change Managers, and Systems Analysts. This will ensure that we have the right systems, processes, tools and procedures to support the Enabling Excellence Digital Strategy, and that the PMO team is pivotal in bringing about the transformation of the institution and revolutionising the future of our technological and learning environment and the success of our change initiatives.

The postholder will provide project budget management and accounting support to the project teams, working with a wide range of stakeholders including senior colleagues, project managers, and business analysts on a variety of change projects. You will support a number of short and long term projects to provide expenditure and forecast detail, keeping track of all budgets, highlighting variances and advising on remedial actions.

You will be adept at extracting and analysing data to produce reports, establishing and continually improving processes and tools to measure the value and costs of projects, with the flexibility to respond to a variety of data requests. You will be able to present management information in a clear and succinct way for a variety of different audiences, and use your accounting knowledge to ensure that standards and procedures are adhered to at all times.

Interview Date: 26 November 2021.

Job Description

JOB PURPOSE:

Provide project budget management and accounting support fundamental to the production of management and project accounting for the Strategic Change Team, to the Head of PMO.

The role is pivotal at the interface internally between the Director of Strategic Change, the Project and Programme Managers and the University Finance team. The postholder will plan and track resource allocation across projects, including reporting to Committees, and support the realisation of financial and non-financial project benefits.

DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES:

1. Provide project expenditure and forecast detail to Head of PMO and Director of Strategic Change; prepare monthly and quarterly reports, keeping track of all forecasted expenditure items and changes to project phasing and codes; prepare reports for budget holders for defined activities, highlighting overspend and unallocated spend and advising on remedial actions.

2. Generate transaction and commitment reports from SAP, monitoring and reconciling where necessary purchase orders and invoices processed by the PMO team with the forecasted and estimated budgets.

3. Extract data from a range of systems and analyse it to produce reports and metrics on project velocity, resource availability and demand, benefits realisation, project rankings and to maintain the Strategic Change roadmap.

4. Assist in five year planning: collating and estimating financial data to provide accurate forecasting.

5. Work with Head of PMO to develop and run a set of metrics to measure the Return on Investment of the projects individually and collectively.

6. Authorise departmental expenditure against agreed budgets, oversee the purchase order requests and goods receipting processes, recording all authorised changes to budgets and forecasts. Liaising with University Finance colleagues to align departmental budget management processes with University Finance requirements.

7. Support procurement and tendering activities with financial information, and work with University Finance team to track and report back on planned and realised financial benefits from projects.

8. In consultation with Finance colleagues and the Head of PMO, implement and develop new systems and procedures to improve upon the efficiency of the team in the delivery of management information and financial processing.

9. To carry out other ad hoc duties commensurate with the level as required by the Head of PMO.