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The Project Manager leads and manages the project and project team. They are responsible for driving and overseeing the delivery of the project to ensure objectives are clearly defined and achieved within agreed time, cost, and quality constraints. The Project Manager plays a key role in project governance and works with stakeholders to ensure agreed project outputs are delivered, enabling benefits to be realised.
| Responsibility | Detail |
|---|---|
| Delivery | Is accountable to the Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) for creating and leading the project to deliver agreed outcomes within time, cost, and quality constraints. |
| Project management | Provides day-to-day management and leadership for the project and team. Offers effective leadership and management controls, sets project controls and 'stop/go' decision points, designs the project structure appropriate for its stage, sets delivery methodologies, and manages transitions between project phases. |
| Business case | Develops the business case. |
| Budget | Develops the budget and tracks progress within it. |
| Resources | Identifies skill requirements for all project stages, recruits resources within budget, and oversees resource deployment. This includes building the project team, delegating roles and responsibilities, developing capability, and fostering innovation. |
| Benefits realisation | Delivers the agreed benefits and outcomes from the business case. Identifies, understands, measures, tracks, and owns benefits. Ensures a Benefits Realisation Strategy is in place and monitors long-term benefit delivery against the business case. |
| Stakeholder management | Collaborates with the SRO to manage senior stakeholders. Identifies and addresses stakeholder interests, manages communications, secures buy-in, and forms collaborative relationships with internal and external stakeholders. Builds consensus among a diverse group of stakeholders. |
| Risks and issues | Manages risks and issues, escalating to the SRO as needed. Ensures strategic and operational risks are identified, prioritised, assessed, and mitigated throughout the project. Keeps senior stakeholders briefed and engaged in the monitoring and control of risk management. Involves specialists as necessary. |
| Governance | Subject to governance processes and provides reporting to the SRO. Establishes and manages quality assurance and change management processes. |
| Assurance | Engages with assurance reviews and implements recommendations. Organises assurance processes, such as gateway reviews, as required by the SRO. |
| Change management | Ensures change management processes are in place to agree on and document changes to deliverables with stakeholders. |
| Guidance and support | Provides support, guidance, and coaching for the project team, promoting effective individual and team performance. |
| Project performance and controls | Develops and agrees the vision and success criteria with the SRO. Maintains the project plan and integrates it with other interdependent projects. Monitors progress, enforces standards, applies good practices, and learns from lessons. Defines and agrees deliverables with stakeholders. Manages project closure and sign-off. |
| Digital and data | Ensures the use of digital tools for planning, scheduling, and resource management. Uses data insights to monitor project performance and implement changes. |
| Sustainability | Ensures that environmental and social considerations are embedded in programme design, procurement and monitoring processes. |
Suitable for individuals who have successfully managed progressively larger and more complex projects.
Generally, not suitable for individuals without previous project delivery experience.
None: No knowledge and no experience.
Awareness: Basic knowledge and limited or no experience. You understand how it can be applied. You can describe the benefits and importance. You may have applied it in a low complexity project under supervision or assisted others in delivering it.
Working: Working knowledge and practical experience. You have a good understanding of this competence. You have applied this independently in low complexity projects and/or under supervision in more complex projects.
Practitioner: Detailed knowledge and significant experience. You have a deep understanding of this competence. You have applied this independently in medium and/or highly complex projects. You advise and may supervise others in the delivery of this competence. You can adapt your approach to meet the requirements of the project.
Expert: Expert knowledge and experience. You are considered an expert within government and in the wider profession. You have applied this competence in multiple complex projects. You have been responsible for developing unique variations to suit specific situations. You champion capability development in this area.
| Competency area | Level |
|---|---|
Commercial and procurement
The ability to work with commercial colleagues to procure goods and services and manage contracts effectively to deliver the work.
|
Practitioner |
Requirements management
The ability to capture stakeholder needs, assess, define and justify those needs to arrive at an agreed schedule of requirements for the work.
|
Practitioner |
Planning
The ability to define the fundamental components of the work in terms of its scope, deliverables, time scales, resource requirements and budget. It also includes the production of broader plans incorporating risk and quality to provide a consolidated overview of the work.
|
Practitioner |
Resource management
The ability to identify, profile, secure and manage the resources required to deliver the work.
|
Practitioner |
Budgeting and cost management
The ability to estimate costs, produce a budget and control forecasts and actual spend against budget.
|
Practitioner |
Risk and issue management
The ability to systematically identify and monitor risks and issues, planning how to mitigate or respond to those risks and issues and implementing the responses.
|
Practitioner |
Quality management
The ability to plan, develop, maintain and apply quality management processes to ensure adherence to those standards throughout the lifecycle of the work.
|
Working |
Business change and implementation
The ability to integrate the solution into operations ensuring that activities are planned and completed to enable the business to implement the change and realise the benefits.
|
Practitioner |
Governance
The ability to clearly define roles, responsibilities and accountabilities and establish controls and approval routes appropriate to each stage of the work to monitor progress and compliance.
|
Expert |
Frameworks and methodologies
The ability to identify and amend appropriate frameworks and methodologies to enable a consistent and efficient approach to delivery at all stages of the lifecycle.
|
Practitioner |
Stakeholder engagement
The ability to systematically identify, analyse and communicate with stakeholders, using appropriate channels, to ensure all those impacted by the change are engaged, taking account of their levels of influence and particular interests.
|
Expert |
Assurance
The ability to establish, plan and manage reviews at appropriate points through the life cycle to provide confidence that the work can be delivered to the agreed outcomes and benefits within time, cost, quality, and other constraints.
|
Practitioner |
Change control
The ability to establish protocols to manage and document all requests for changes to scope, timescales, costs, benefits or other approved baselines for the work. This includes the capture, evaluation and approval or rejection of change requests.
|
Working |
Business case development
The ability to prepare, develop, commission and update business cases to justify the initiation and continuation of projects in terms of benefits, value for money and risk.
|
Practitioner |
Benefits management
The ability to identify, value, plan and track benefits to justify investment and ensure the expected outcomes and social value are realised.
|
Practitioner |
Knowledge management
The ability to identify, share and promote best practices and lessons learned to create a culture of learning and good practice that supports continuous improvement to optimise project delivery.
|
Practitioner |
Digital and data
The ability to effectively leverage digital tools and data analytics for better project delivery outcomes. Combining an understanding of digital technologies with the ability to manage, interpret and utilise data to make informed decisions, improve efficiency and achieve outcomes and benefits.
|
Practitioner |
Sustainability
The ability to incorporate environmental and social considerations into the strategic objectives of the work and to effectively identify, assess and manage these throughout the lifecycle, seeking to maximise benefits and mitigate negative impacts.
|
Practitioner |
None: No knowledge and no experience.
Awareness: Basic knowledge and limited or no experience. You understand how it can be applied. You can describe the benefits and importance. You may have applied it in a low complexity project under supervision or assisted others in delivering it.
Working: Working knowledge and practical experience. You have a good understanding of this competence. You have applied this independently in low complexity projects and/or under supervision in more complex projects.
Practitioner: Detailed knowledge and significant experience. You have a deep understanding of this competence. You have applied this independently in medium and/or highly complex projects. You advise and may supervise others in the delivery of this competence. You can adapt your approach to meet the requirements of the project.
Expert: Expert knowledge and experience. You are considered an expert within government and in the wider profession. You have applied this competence in multiple complex projects. You have been responsible for developing unique variations to suit specific situations. You champion capability development in this area.
| Competency area | Level |
|---|---|
Visible leadership
The ability to engage, motivate and coach others. To act as a role model and inspire and empower others. Aligned to the leadership Civil Service behaviour.
|
Expert |
Credible action
The ability to promote the wider public good in all actions and to act in a morally, legally and socially appropriate manner at all times. Challenges unacceptable behaviour. Aligned to the leadership Civil Service behaviour.
|
Expert |
Working with ambiguity
The ability to work in an environment of uncertainty and continual change. Able to feel comfortable making decisions and setting direction without having the full picture and re-focus as details emerge. Can apply knowledge and techniques to reduce ambiguity. Aligned to the making effective decisions Civil Service behaviour.
|
Practitioner |
Collaboration
The ability to establish and develop productive relationships with internal and external stakeholders, bringing people together to benefit the project. Aligned to the working together Civil Service behaviour.
|
Expert |
Influencing
The ability to influence, change and impact decisions with both internal and external stakeholders. Aligned to the communicating and influencing Civil Service behaviour.
|
Expert |
Conflict resolution
The ability to recognise, anticipate and effectively deal with existing or potential conflicts at an individual, team or strategic level. Aligned to the working together and leadership Civil Service behaviours.
|
Expert |
Inspiring others
The ability to create and present a compelling vision and set clear direction, that motivates others to work towards a common goal. Aligned to the leadership Civil Service behaviour.
|
Expert |
Resilience
The ability to adapt to changing circumstances and adverse situations whilst remaining calm, reassuring others and maintaining performance. Aligned to the delivering at pace Civil Service behaviour.
|
Expert |
Innovation
The ability to think of, research and apply new ideas and ways of doing things. Encourages and supports innovations from others, is willing to experiment and follow ideas through to implementation. Aligned to the changing and improving Civil Service behaviour.
|
Practitioner |
Culture change
The ability to plan, lead and effect positive cultural change, securing commitment and buy-in, and promoting a positive long term vision. Recognises when broader culture change is necessary to deliver a project. Aligned to the seeing the big picture, and changing and improving Civil Service behaviours.
|
Expert |