Project Innovation Manager

Requisition ID: 299672 Relocation Authorized: National - Family Telework Type: Part-Time Telework Work Location: Houston, TX Extraordinary teams building inspiring projects: Since 1898, we have helped customers complete more than 25,000 projects in 160 countries on all seven continents that have created jobs, grown economies, improved the resiliency of the world's infrastructure, increased access to energy, resources, and vital services, and made the world a safer, cleaner place. Differentiated by the quality of our people and our relentless drive to deliver the most successful outcomes, we align our capabilities to our customers' objectives to create a lasting positive impact. We serve the Infrastructure; Nuclear, Security & Environmental; Energy; Mining & Metals, and the Manufacturing and Technology markets. Our services span from initial planning and investment, through start-up and operations. Core to Bechtel is our Vision, Values and Commitments . They are what we believe, what customers can expect, and how we deliver. Learn more about our extraordinary teams building inspiring projects in our Impact Report . Project Overview: Bechtel Energy is executing a portfolio of large-scale projects globally with a current focus along the U.S. Gulf Coast. The Energy GBU Innovation team supports these projects by identifying, evaluating, piloting, and scaling emerging hardware and software technologies that improve the safety, productivity, schedule certainty, and data quality of field execution. Job Summary: In this role, you will own a portfolio of field technology deployments across multiple Bechtel Energy projects rather than a single initiative. You will plan the scope, schedule, and cost of that portfolio, decide which technologies are ready for a live jobsite and which are not, and carry the ones that succeed from a single successful pilot into a repeatable standard other projects can run without you. You will serve as the senior technical authority for field deployment within the Energy Innovation team: the escalation point when a deployment stalls, the person who negotiates scope and performance with vendors, the owner of the business case and benefits realization, and the coach who develops Field Deployment Engineers and rotational assignees. You will also plan and review the work of others assigned to parts of your initiatives, and interface with other project functions and services to optimize expertise and resources. Major Responsibilities: Plans the scope, schedule, and cost of field deployment initiatives for a medium-sized project or a particular technology area, and plans, develops, implements, and maintains those initiatives to accelerate the safer, better, faster, and leaner execution of our projects. Owns a multi-project deployment portfolio across the U.S. Gulf Coast LNG projects, prioritizing initiatives against project pain points, sequencing deployments around construction schedules, and deciding where limited field access and craft attention are spent. Leads pilot execution end to end, from securing the pilot opportunity with a live project through execution plan, success criteria, field validation, close-out report, and the recommendation on whether to scale, iterate, or stop. Converts successful pilots into repeatable deployment standards, workflows, checklists, training material, and support models that other Energy projects can adopt without a bespoke effort each time. Serves as the primary technical escalation point for field deployments, leading root cause analysis on failed or underperforming technology and deciding when to recover, rescope, or terminate a deployment. Owns the business case and benefits realization for the deployments in the portfolio, defining the productivity, schedule, safety, and cost measures up front, validating the data behind them, and reporting outcomes to project and functional leadership. Initiates and leads engagements with vendors, consultants, and other third parties, shaping scope, performance expectations, support and sustainment arrangements, and commercial structure in coordination with Procurement, and makes recommendations on the innovation aspects of bid evaluations and awards for approval. Provides inputs for strategy, planning, estimating of budgets and staff, implementation, procedure management, knowledge management, measurement and reporting, risk management, and continuous improvement, and serves as a subject matter expert for the project team. Plans and executes the work assigned, and coordinates and reviews the work of Field Deployment Engineers and others assigned to implement parts of the initiatives, including estimating the field support each deployment requires. Mentors and develops junior deployment engineers, interns, and rotational assignees, raising the technical standard of pilot planning, field testing, and documentation across the team. Builds and sustains the stakeholder coalition a deployment depends on, working with Project Field Engineers, Responsible Field Engineers, Superintendents, Construction Automation, IS&T, Procurement, ES&H, and Quality to secure access, approvals, and adoption, and interfaces with other project functions and services to optimize expertise and resources. Monitors trends in innovation topics and standards and makes recommendations for new technology exploration to meet project needs, maintaining an informed view of the vendor landscape in robotics, autonomy, reality capture, sensing, and construction analytics. Education and Experience Requirements: Requires a bachelor's degree (or international equivalent) and 5-8 years of relevant experience, or 9-12 years of relevant work experience. Degree in mechanical engineering, mechatronics, robotics, chemical engineering, construction engineering, electrical engineering, computer engineering, systems engineering, or a related technical discipline. Ability to work in field construction environments, comply with project safety requirements, and travel to project sites as required. Required Knowledge and Skills: Demonstrated record of taking a technology through a live field pilot to an adopted, repeatable practice, including at least one deployment the candidate personally owned end to end. This is the primary qualifying factor and separates this role from technology scouting or research experience. Working command of technology maturity assessment and the discipline to judge readiness honestly, so that field access, craft time, and project money are committed only to technologies that can survive an operating jobsite. Substantive construction or industrial field experience, sufficient to hold a credible technical conversation with Superintendents, Field Engineering, and craft supervision about sequencing, constructability, and workfront risk. Vendor and commercial capability: scoping statements of work, defining acceptance and performance criteria, evaluating proposals, and holding suppliers accountable to field results in coordination with Procurement. Ability to build and defend a business case, including defining benefit measures before a pilot begins, validating the underlying field data, and presenting outcomes and recommendations to project and functional leadership. Change management and adoption skill: the ability to get a new capability used by crews who did not ask for it, through training, work instructions, early-adopter support, and visible field presence. Ability to plan, coordinate, and review the work of others, and to mentor junior engineers on pilot planning, field testing, documentation, and stakeholder engagement. Preferred Qualifications Deep experience in one or more of: robotics and autonomous systems, remotely operated construction equipment, drones and reality capture, IoT sensing and telematics, construction analytics, or digital construction workflows, with breadth across the others. LNG, oil and gas, power, or other large industrial project experience, and familiarity with the field engineering, quality, and ES&H processes such projects run on. FAA Part 107 Remote Pilot Certificate or equivalent, and OSHA 30-Hour Construction. Candidates with drone experience are encouraged to include drone make, model, flight experience, and flight hours at the top of their resume. Systems integration experience covering site connectivity, data pipelines, and integration of field devices with existing project platforms, together with awareness of the security considerations that connected devices introduce on an operating site. Proficiency with engineering, geospatial, or analytics tooling such as SolidWorks, ANSYS Workbench, ArcGIS, Autodesk ReCap, AutoCAD, or comparable platforms, and the ability to work with field data directly rather than only through reports. Total Rewards/Benefits: For decades, Bechtel has worked to inspire the next generation of employees and beyond! Because our teams face some of the world's toughest challenges, we offer robust benefits to ensure our people thrive. Whether it is advancing careers, delivering programs to enhance our culture, or providing time to recharge, Bechtel has the benefits to build a legacy of sustainable growth. Learn more at bechtel.com/total-rewards. Diverse teams build the extraordinary: As a global company, Bechtel has long been home to a vibrant multitude of nationalities, cultures, ethnicities, and life experiences. This diversity has made us a more trusted partner, more effective problem solvers and innovators, and a more attractive destination for leading talent. We are committed to being a company where every colleague feels that they belong-where colleagues feel part of "One Team," respected and rewarded for what they bring, supported in pursuing their goals, invested in our values and purpose, and treated equitably. Click here to learn more about the people who power our legacy. Bechtel is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, age, national origin, disability, citizenship status (except as authorized by law), protected veteran status, genetic information, and any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local law. Applicants with a disability, who require a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application or hiring process, may e-mail their request to acesstmt@bechtel.com