Senior Planner, Portfolio Planning

About us

Superpowered. Meaningful work. Human impact. A story we're proud to tell. This is what matters to us at National Grid. In a world of complexity and unanswered questions, there is one thing we're certain about:
The power of our people.

National Grid is hiring a Senior Planner, Portfolio Planning for Worcester, Massachusetts.

National Grid outsources electric construction work across its US service territory. National Grid is posting a position to centralize estimation work for the NE electric contractors. This person will be responsible for validating the accuracy of contractor estimates, ensuring constructability for project scopes, assembling pricing workbooks for bid projects and creating various reports on areas of interest such as estimate versus actuals, change order volumes and price competition.

• Build, develop, and maintain external relationships with associated vendors and internal relationships with Design, Distribution Construction, Operational Divisions, Resource Planning (Estimating) and Procurement to ensure accuracy in estimation.

• Ensure the accuracy of contractor estimates for distribution/sub-transmission overhead and underground construction.
• Subject matter expert on construction unit inclusivity and usage.
• Provide support of new contract strategies from a construction cost perspective.
• Provide review and approval of additional disciplines' work such as electrically based civil, transmission or substations work when requested.
• Provide review of work breakdown structures on procurement bid work.

• Validate all job-related documents / information (drawings, sketches, job cards, timelines, etc) for constructability.
• Participate in pre-construction meetings when requested to identify estimated construction methodology.
• Drive contractor performance/progress through monitoring estimate status, assessing estimating accuracy and evaluating change order usage.
• Attend and provide input for routine contractor scheduling meetings to ensure estimates flow properly.
• Provide input to Strategy to improve competitive bid process and work breakdown structure assembly.
• Work to improve unit libraries and drive contractors to perform work on units wherever possible.
• Lead small teams in identifying and addressing problems for collaborative solutions.

• Identify and report areas of value leakage and work with contracts team to close. This includes frequency and impact of items such as T&E usage, incorrect unit usage and pass thru usage.

• Support weather related events, preferably as Restoration Crew Supervision if experience allows.

• Experience in overhead and underground line construction. Experience in civil, transmission and substations construction a plus.
• Experience in accurately estimating overhead and underground line construction to maximize efficiencies and garner savings.
• Well developed written and communication skills, ability to present and explain report data to upper management.
• Ability to work well with others
• Comfortable in working both alone and in team settings. This includes working from the field out of a vehicle to ensure efficient productivity.
• Strong organizational skills
• Experience working in a dynamic environment
• Working with a third party service provider
• Self-motivated

• Bachelor's degree in construction management, project management, engineering, or 4 years qualifying experience.
• 3+ years field construction experience of overhead or underground distribution and sub-transmission systems.
• Familiarity and experience with transmission, substation and civil construction.
• Experience in project estimate assembly, review and validation, negotiation and presentation.
• Proven communication skills.
• Proven leadership skills.
• Microsoft Office applications including Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Outlook.
• Ability to lead and participate in cross functional teams with varying goals.
• Demonstrated successful delivery of large projects requiring project management oversight.

Salary - $99,000 - $117,000

This position has a career path which provides for advancement opportunities within and across bands as you develop and evolve in the position; gaining experience, expertise and acquiring and applying technical skills. Candidates will be assessed and provided offers against the minimum qualifications of this role and their individual experience.

National Grid is an equal opportunity employer that values a broad diversity of talent, knowledge, experience and expertise. We foster a culture of inclusion that drives employee engagement to deliver superior performance to the communities we serve. National Grid is proud to be an affirmative action employer. We encourage minorities, women, individuals with disabilities and protected veterans to join the National Grid team.