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The Project Support Officer (PSO) is the central administrative and logistical hub for the project team. This role provides comprehensive support to the Project Manager and the wider team, ensuring robust project controls, meticulous document management, accurate financial and resource tracking, and seamless governance. The PSO is a highly organized and proactive professional who anticipates needs, manages complex information flows, and ensures the project operates efficiently and in compliance with all standards.

Responsibilities:

Planning & Schedule Control

• Maintain the master project plan and detailed work schedules in the agreed planning tool, updating progress weekly from workstream leads and flagging slippage or critical path risks to the Project Manager.

• Prepare look-ahead schedules, Gantt charts, and milestone trackers for use in project board meetings and team briefings.

• Support re-planning exercises at stage boundaries or when approved changes require a revised baseline.

Registers & Project Controls

• Own and maintain the RAID log (Risks, Actions, Issues, Dependencies), chasing owners for updates and escalating overdue items.

• Maintain the Risk Register, Issue Register, Lessons Log, Quality Register, and Decision Log, ensuring entries are current, consistently formatted, and reviewed at the appropriate governance forum.

• Track change requests through the change control process, recording the details of each approved change against the baseline.

Document & Configuration Management

• Establish and maintain the project filing structure, enforcing version control, naming conventions, and access permissions across the shared workspace.

• Manage the flow of project documents — distributing pre-reads, collecting sign-offs, archiving approved deliverables, and ensuring the team always works from the latest version.

• Act as configuration librarian where required, tracking the status of all formal project products.

Financial & Resource Tracking

• Track project expenditure against the approved budget, recording actuals, commitments, and forecasts and flagging variances to the Project Manager.

• Process purchase orders, timesheets, and contractor invoices through the agreed workflow, ensuring costs are coded to the correct budget lines.

• Maintain the resource allocation schedule and highlight conflicts or gaps requiring management attention.

Site Access & Logistics Coordination

• Coordinate site access arrangements for audit teams, refresh contractors, and specialist surveyors, liaising with local security points of contacts to secure the required access.

• Maintain the site visit schedule, tracking confirmed dates, access permits, security clearances, and any site-specific induction or health and safety requirements that must be completed before arrival.

• Maintain a site access tracker that records visit outcomes — completed, rescheduled, or denied — and flags sites with repeated access difficulties to the Project Manager for escalation to the Vendor Manager or client.

• Coordinate with contractors and internal teams to sequence site visits efficiently, grouping geographically close sites into logical routes and avoiding clashes where multiple teams require access to the same location.

• Ensure all site visit documentation — access request forms, risk assessments, method statements, and photographic evidence of completed work — is collected, filed, and linked to the relevant site record in the project filing structure.

Reporting & Governance Support

• Draft highlight reports, checkpoint reports, and dashboard packs for the Project Manager's review, pulling together schedule, cost, risk, and quality data into a clear narrative.

• Organise all project meetings — booking rooms or virtual sessions, preparing agendas, circulating papers, and confirming attendance.

• Take accurate minutes, record decisions and actions with owners and deadlines, and follow up on outstanding actions between meetings.

• Maintain the forward calendar of stage gates, board meetings, and quality reviews, ensuring all required inputs are prepared on time.

General Team Support

Act as the first point of contact for administrative queries from team members, directing people to the right templates, processes, or escalation routes.

Essential Qualifications & Experience:

Technical & Tool Skills

• Strong proficiency in project scheduling tools — ideally Microsoft Project and ServiceNow

• Advanced Excel skills including pivot tables, lookups, conditional formatting, and the ability to build and maintain cost trackers and resource models.

• Confident user of Microsoft 365 (SharePoint, Teams, Word, PowerPoint) for document management, collaboration, and reporting.

• Ability to build clear, concise dashboards and visual reports that translate raw data into RAG statuses, trend charts, and exception summaries for senior audiences.

• Familiarity with project management information systems (PMIS) or portfolio tools

Organisational & Administrative Skills

• Exceptional attention to detail — the kind of person who notices a version number is wrong, a date has shifted, or a name is misspelled before it reaches a board pack.

• Highly organised with the ability to manage multiple concurrent tasks, deadlines, and information flows without dropping things.

• Strong written communication — able to draft clear, grammatically correct minutes, reports, and status updates that require minimal editing by the Project Manager.

• Proactive and self-starting — able to anticipate what the Project Manager will need next rather than waiting to be asked.

• Diplomatic and persistent when chasing actions from colleagues, contractors, and senior stakeholders who may not prioritise the PSO's requests.

Professional & Interpersonal Skills

• Comfortable working across all levels of seniority, from site teams to the project board, and adapting communication style accordingly.

• Calm under pressure, particularly during busy reporting periods, stage gates, or when multiple deadlines converge.

• Trustworthy with sensitive information — the PSO will have visibility of financial data, personnel matters, and pre-decisional papers.

• Team-oriented with a willingness to pick up whatever needs doing — the PSO role is broad and sometimes unglamorous, and the right person takes pride in making the whole team more effective.

• Willing to challenge constructively — confident enough to push back if a process is being bypassed or a standard is slipping, even when the person cutting corners is more senior.

If you've read the description and feel this role is a great match, we'd love to hear from you! Click "Apply for this job" to be directed to a brief questionnaire. It should only take a few moments to complete, and we'll be in touch promptly if your experience aligns with our needs.