Project Planner Job in Nairobi, Kenya

Job Title: Project Planner

Job Code: PP/MM/130607
 

Number of Positions Open: 1

Location: Nairobi, Kenya

Closing Date: Open Until Filled
 

Summary:  We design, manufactures and sells highly functional, highly affordable vehicles as a transportation platform empowering local entrepreneurs to mobilize the developing world. 

They recognize that appropriate transport is a key enabler to socio-economic development in deprived communities across the developing world and aim to unlock this vast potential by designing, manufacturing and selling a new vehicle for Africa, starting in Kenya.

They are looking for exceptional individuals who share their vision and possess the skills and attitude necessary to make a valuable contribution to our work in Africa.

Job Objective:

They are seeking an exceptional early-mid career professional to coordinate our technical and operations teams to deliver diverse and complex projects from inception to launch. 

The role will require a close working relationship across the client’s management team, particularly with the Integration Manager and Supply Chain Manager. Specific duties include, but are not limited to: 

Primary Responsibilities:

Project Planning

• Develop, manage and communicate robust project plans across the organization – ensure key stakeholders are identified and kept regularly updated on progress and escalate risks/issues accordingly.
• Map project plan dependencies between engineering, supply chain, production, procurement, aftersales and sales and marketing functions.
• Work closely with technical and operations staff to monitor the status of project line items and proactively identify and mitigate risks and issues.
• Maintain a rigorous risk and issue log for tasks on each project – ensure key stakeholders are kept regularly informed.
• Produce professional, simple and error-free documents to the client’s management and leadership.
• Develop a simple and quick process for team members to feed status updates into a central project management system.
• Develop simply and robust project management dashboards for both team and cross functional projects – present dashboard to the client’s leadership as appropriate.
• Maintain historical log of deadlines to better understand actual man-hours dedicated to each task – analyze historical plans to effectively allocate proper resources and lead times to new projects.

Communication and Facilitation

• Facilitate efficient daily cross-functional standing meetings to ensure team projects are on track for timely completion.
• Present regular project management dashboard to the client’s leadership and project leads.

Skills and Certification:

• An ideal candidate should combine outstanding technical skills in project management with excellent interpersonal and communication skills to work effectively with a multidisciplinary team.
• They should be adept to quickly grasp organizational interdependencies and be comfortable organizing complex information into actionable plans.

Required:

• Bachelor degree (minimum) in a quantitative subject
• 3.4 GPA or higher from a top university worldwide
• Excellent problem solving ability in a cross-functional and multi-cultural environment; able to define problems, collect relevant data, extract meaning from data, and draw valid conclusions
• Strong analytical skills with regards to data manipulation and the ability to create information from data
• Ability to effectively communicate timelines and project progress with both internal and external management teams
• Exceptional attention to detail
• Ability to quickly grasp high level concepts and develop actionable plans even with initial limited understanding of technical concepts
• Exceptional intellectual curiosity and ability to seek clarity on information they do not understand from the client staff and personal external research
• Ability to take ownership and accountability of project timeline and results
• Strong technical writing ability; able to read and interpret drawings
• Proficiency in Project, Viso, Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Access, Visio
• Ability to adapt to a dynamic working environment and work within a diverse team
• Excellent oral and written communication skills
• Extreme patience and a good sense of humor
• Excellent interpersonal skills to work effectively with others; ability to communicate potentially negative information in an effective way
• A start-up personality; entrepreneurial, ambitious, independent, systematic attention to detail,
• structured thinker, goal oriented, flexible, and able to deal well with setbacks
• Fluency in English

Experience: 4+ years related experience in project management 

Desired:

• 6+ years related experience in project management or operations
• Knowledge of manufacturing, equipment and process within final assembly, body shop, paint shop and powertrain
• Fluency in Kiswahili (the national language of Kenya)

How to Apply:

Interested candidates holding the necessary requirements, good performance and / or references are encouraged to apply with detailed CV’s, inclusive of names and contacts of 3 referees, current telephone number and email address by scrolling down and clicking on: Project Planner