Practice Lead, Project Management

Key Responsibilities

• Input to and support on the strategic direction of the Project Management practice.
• Embed and consistently reinforce Codec’s consulting standards, professional behaviours and leadership expectations across the Project Management practice
• Build a high-performing, commercially successful and scalable project delivery function.
• Lead adoption of AI-enabled project and programme management practices, ensuring the practice uses approved tools, standards and reusable approaches to improve quality, productivity and consistency
• Drive consistency, quality and best practices across all projects and programmes.
• Create reusable assets, templates and frameworks to improve efficiency and delivery quality.
• Partner with other Practice Leads and business leaders to support organisational goals and delivery excellence.
• Foster a culture of accountability, collaboration, innovation and continuous improvement.
• Maintain a succession and leadership pipeline for critical Project, Programme and Portfolio Management roles.

• Provide oversight and governance across project and programme delivery within the practice.
• Ensure projects are delivered on time, within budget and to the required quality standards or escalated where needed
• Support Project Managers in managing complex risks, issues, dependencies and stakeholder relationships.
• Act as an escalation point for significant delivery challenges ensuring timely communication to the Chief Delivery Officer
• Monitor project performance, utilisation, profitability and customer outcomes.
• Drive proactive risk management and effective delivery governance across the project portfolio.
• Ensure project management practices align with client expectations and Codec delivery standards.
• Maintain a visible leadership presence across delivery teams, regularly engaging employees and customers to reinforce expectations, gather feedback and build confidence.

• Lead, coach and develop all member of the Project Management as visible, accountable client and people leaders, aligned with the leadership capability model established by the Director
• Ensure performance reviews, career development discussions and succession planning activities are proactively managed, Support employee engagement, wellbeing and professional growth within the team.
• Build capability through mentoring, knowledge sharing and professional development initiatives.
• Implement the organisational career framework, progression criteria and capability expectations within the practice, providing evidence-based recommendations on promotion and succession
• Identify capability, behavioural and performance gaps early and take timely, constructive action in partnership with the Director and People team.
• Promote collaboration and knowledge sharing across practices and delivery teams.

• Own practice utilisation and resource planning, ensuring effective deployment of project management capability.
• Work closely with Delivery Leaders and Practice Leads to match resources to client demand.
• Support workforce planning, recruitment and onboarding activities.
• Monitor practice performance against utilisation, revenue and profitability targets.
• Contribute to forecasting, budgeting and capacity planning activities.
• Drive operational efficiencies that support sustainable practice growth
• Use delivery telemetry and tooling outputs to identify behavioural, capability and performance trends and translate these into coaching and improvement actions
• Identify recurring organisational delivery and leadership issues, escalate systemic themes to the Director and CDO, and lead agreed improvement actions

• Build trusted advisor relationships with clients and key stakeholder groups.
• Support customer success through strong delivery oversight and proactive engagement.
• Participate in executive-level client discussions where required.
• Ensure high levels of customer satisfaction and successful project outcomes.
• Identify opportunities to expand services and strengthen client relationships.
• Escalate strategically significant, sensitive or systemic delivery concerns promptly and support joint intervention with the Director and CDO.

• Support sales and business development activities by providing project delivery expertise.
• Contribute to proposals, estimates, Statements of Work and project planning activities.
• Participate in customer presentations, workshops and solution discussions.
• Provide delivery governance input into bids and complex opportunities.
• Ensure proposed solutions can be delivered effectively, efficiently and profitably.

Skills, Knowledge and Expertise

• Significant experience managing complex projects, programmes and delivery portfolios.
• Strong understanding of project management methodologies, including Agile, Waterfall and hybrid delivery approaches.
• Proven people leadership experience, including coaching, mentoring and performance management.
• Strong commercial awareness with experience managing utilisation, forecasting and project profitability.
• Experience operating within a consulting, professional services or technology delivery environment.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills.
• Ability to influence senior leaders, customers and cross-functional teams.
• Strong risk management, governance and problem-solving capabilities.

• Project management certification such as PMP, PRINCE2, AgilePM or equivalent.
• Experience leading transformations or practice development initiatives.
• Experience delivering Microsoft or enterprise technology projects.
• Experience supporting pre-sales and business development activities.

• Success in this role will be measured through:
• Practice utilisation and profitability.
• Successful delivery of projects and programmes.
• Customer satisfaction and retention.
• Employee engagement and retention within the practice.
• Capability growth and development of the team.
• Improvement of delivery standards, governance and operational efficiency.
• Contribution to business growth and strategic objectives.

• Reports To: Director of Consulting and Delivery Leadership.
• Direct Reports: Project Managers, Senior Project Managers, Portfolio Managers.
• Key Stakeholders: Director of Consulting & Delivery Leadership, Chief Delivery Officer, Practice Leads, Sales, Operations, Finance, HR, Technical Leads, Customers and Executive Sponsors.
• This role holds accountability for the overall performance, capability, utilisation and commercial success of the Project Management practice while ensuring delivery excellence across the organisation.