Programme Manager - Passive Fire Protection

Ventro Group is a leading fire safety and building compliance business, backed by KLAR Partners and operating through the Ventro, Firntec and HJS brands. We deliver fire protection, façade and building compliance works across the UK, and we are scaling fast.

You are accountable for the delivery performance of a portfolio of projects, and for the standard to which every one of them is run. You set how work is planned, controlled and closed out, you assure it across the portfolio, and you hold the Project Managers to it. You lead the principal projects yourself, from preconstruction through to final account, so the standard you set is one you can demonstrate rather than describe.

This role exists to raise delivery performance, not to maintain it. We are rebuilding how projects are run  will be expected to find where delivery is failing, change it, and evidence the improvement.

• Programme and revenue position across every live project in the portfolio, whether you run it or a Project Manager does.
• The delivery standard: how a job is set up, controlled and closed out, and whether it is actually being followed.
• The project management team. You set the standard, challenge their programmes, applications and forecasts, and address shortfall early.
• Commercial governance: forecast integrity, monthly applications, variations and disputes, and final accounts held to closure.
• Client ownership from prestart to final and accreditation sign-off, including when a project is under pressure.

• Invoiced revenue across the full portfolio, including projects delivered by your team.
• OTIF against Ventro's own programme, baselined at Day 1, with baseline revisions logged separately.
• Quality: first-time sign-off rate, snag volume at practical completion, and O&M issued to programme.

Your background matters less than your record. We will consider you from passive or active fire, façade, building compliance, refurbishment, planned works, fit-out, M&E or mainstream contracting, provided you have held a portfolio of projects and the commercial position that goes with it. Fire and compliance experience is an advantage, not a gate.

• Define a delivery standard, communicate it, and hold a team to it consistently rather than case by case.
• Read a programme written by someone else and find what it is hiding.
• Hold the commercial position of a portfolio: forecasts, applications, variations, disputes and final account closure.
• Manage performance formally, including capability conversations and difficult decisions.
• Present a delivery position credibly to clients and to board level, including when that position is poor.

• Technical understanding of your discipline sufficient to arbitrate on installation quality, and the ability to build passive fire knowledge quickly if you are coming from an adjacent sector.
• CDM 2015, RAMS and site health and safety at the level of assuring others' compliance, not just producing your own.
• Building Safety Act 2022 and BS 8670-1:2024 as they apply to a delivery function, or the capability to get there.
• SMSTS and CSCS. Prince2, NVQ Level 6 or MCIOB desirable.

• Essential. A sustained record of running multiple live projects at once with full programme and commercial control.
• Essential. Formal line management of project or site managers, including performance and capability decisions.
• Essential. Raising delivery performance in a team or portfolio, where you can show the position before and after.
• Desirable. Delivery in a business going through structural change, and work in occupied buildings or social housing.

• Right from the Start. Right first time, with records that stand up to external audit.
• Extreme…