Senior Planner​/Scheduler - Life Sciences Mega Project

Overview

Company: AcceleratedPM

Job Type: Full-time

Job Location: Kankakee, IL

Work Schedule: Full-time on-site

Accelerated

PM is seeking a Senior Planner/Scheduler to support a major biopharmaceutical manufacturing expansion in the Kankakee, Illinois area. This is a senior, field-facing, planning and scheduling role for a professional who understands construction execution, can facilitate interactive planning sessions, conduct field walks to validate progress, and convert real project conditions into credible, logic-driven schedules. The successful candidate must be able to integrate contractor inputs, support earned value reporting, identify critical and near-critical path drivers, and translate construction, procurement, commissioning, and operational readiness requirements into executable schedules.

This role is best suited for someone with strong construction knowledge, major CAPEX experience in process-heavy industries, and the ability to support a construction management team in meeting rigorous client project controls standards.

Location/Travel:

• Full-time on-site presence required.
• Primary project location is in the Kankakee, IL/Bourbonnais Township area.
• Work environment includes construction management offices, professional office settings, and active construction areas where PPE and site safety requirements apply.

• Serve as a field-facing planner/scheduler with strong construction knowledge and practical understanding of how work is planned, sequenced, installed, inspected, turned over, and commissioned.
• Develop, maintain, and analyze integrated project schedules for a major biopharmaceutical manufacturing expansion.
• Facilitate interactive planning sessions with contractors, construction managers, discipline leads, commissioning/validation stakeholders, and project controls personnel.
• Conduct field walks to validate progress, identify constraints, confirm workface readiness, and test whether schedule updates reflect actual field conditions.
• Support schedule governance, progress measurement, earned value requirements, baseline discipline, and client reporting standards.
• Provide schedule analysis that helps leadership understand critical path movement, milestone risk, contractor performance, interface issues, forecast impacts, and recovery options.

• Develop, maintain, status, and analyze project schedules using Oracle Primavera Cloud or similar Primavera-based platforms.
• Build logic-driven schedules that reflect construction sequencing, procurement dependencies, contractor interfaces, access constraints, inspection requirements, commissioning handoffs, and turnover milestones.
• Facilitate interactive planning sessions, look-ahead planning meetings, pull-planning discussions, and schedule development workshops with contractors and project stakeholders.
• Conduct field walks with construction managers, superintendents, discipline leads, and contractors to validate progress, identify constraints, confirm sequencing, and assess workface readiness.
• Review contractor schedule updates and reported progress against actual field conditions, including installed quantities, physical percent complete, inspection status, system turnover, and milestone readiness.
• Coordinate schedule inputs from contractors, construction managers, engineering, procurement, quality, commissioning, validation, and project controls stakeholders.
• Review contractor schedules and updates for completeness, sequencing, logic quality, constraints, float, calendars, coding, progress status, and alignment with project requirements.
• Support baseline development, reforecasting, schedule change control, schedule reporting, and earned value requirements.
• Coordinate with cost controls and project controls leadership to support cost/schedule integration, forecast updates, variance narratives, and performance reporting.
• Produce schedule reports, look-ahead schedules, milestone reports, critical path analysis, variance explanations, executive summaries, and schedule dashboards.
• Identify critical and near-critical path drivers, schedule slippage, missed handoffs, field constraints, access issues, trade stacking, procurement delays,…