Senior Project/Program Director (Pharmaceutical - Construction)

About this role

At Cumming Group, you will work on some of the world's most exciting projects in a dynamic environment where your success is measured by the impact you make. We are one of the fastest-growing project and cost management consultancies in the United States, as reflected in our top 10 rankings in ENR. With over 60 offices globally, an extremely diverse project portfolio, and double-digit year-over-year revenue growth, the opportunities to make your mark are limitless!

The Senior Project Director will serve as the owner’s representative for a major pharmaceutical manufacturing capital program in Houston, TX. This role will lead a portfolio of concurrent projects, providing strategic direction and accountability across scope, cost, schedule, safety, quality, risk, and operational readiness. The ideal candidate has led individual project scopes exceeding $100 million and brings deep experience delivering complex pharmaceutical or biotechnology manufacturing facilities. This position requires a consistent on-site presence at the client location.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities: • Provide executive oversight for a portfolio of major capital projects and interdependent workstreams. • Represent the client’s interests throughout design, procurement, construction, commissioning, qualification, start-up, and turnover. • Lead Project Directors, Project Managers, consultants, contractors, vendors, and functional project teams. • Establish portfolio governance, execution strategies, reporting requirements, decision pathways, and escalation protocols. • Integrate project scope, schedules, budgets, risks, resources, and cross-project dependencies into a coordinated execution plan. • Maintain accountability for portfolio cost, schedule, safety, quality, and delivery performance. • Review project plans, forecasts, schedules, risk registers, change requests, and recovery strategies, intervening when performance is at risk. • Lead resolution of significant technical, commercial, contractual, construction, and stakeholder issues. • Direct value engineering, constructability, design optimization, and lifecycle-cost initiatives. • Ensure project delivery aligns with client standards, manufacturing requirements, GMP expectations, and applicable regulatory and safety requirements. • Oversee contracting and procurement strategies, contractor performance, commercial negotiations, claims, and change management. • Align engineering, construction, quality, validation, operations, maintenance, and environmental health and safety stakeholders. • Provide executive reporting on progress, financial performance, risk exposure, critical decisions, and corrective actions. • Ensure facilities and systems are commissioned, qualified, documented, and ready for start-up and operational turnover. • Develop and mentor project leadership while driving accountability and consistent execution across the portfolio.

Knowledge & Skills Required: • Ability to provide executive oversight across multiple concurrent projects and interdependent workstreams. • Strong command of project governance, project controls, integrated scheduling, forecasting, risk management, contingency, and change control. • Deep understanding of pharmaceutical facility design, construction, commissioning, qualification, validation, start-up, and operational turnover. • Strong commercial and contractual judgment, including procurement strategy, contractor performance, negotiations, claims, and dispute resolution. • Working knowledge of GMP, OSHA, environmental, permitting, and process-safety requirements. • Ability to align engineering, construction, quality, validation, operations, maintenance, and EHS stakeholders around shared project objectives. • Ability to identify emerging issues, make timely decisions, and direct corrective or recovery strategies. • Strong executive communication, stakeholder management, negotiation, and team-leadership capabilities.

Preferred Education and Experience: • Education: Bachelor’s degree in engineering, Construction Management, Architecture, or a related technical discipline. • Experience: 15+ years of progressive capital project leadership experience, including: • Direct responsibility for individual project scopes exceeding $100 million. • Leadership of multiple major projects or workstreams being executed concurrently. • Owner’s representative or comparable client-side project leadership experience. • Delivery of large, complex pharmaceutical or biotechnology manufacturing projects. • Experience with API, biologics, fill-finish, advanced manufacturing, laboratory, pilot plant, or similar regulated facilities is preferred.

Preferred Certification: PMP, CCM, PE, or comparable professional credential.

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Cumming Group is committed to providing Equal Employment Opportunity in its personnel policies and practices. It is Cumming Group’s policy to recruit, hire, train and promote Team Members and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, age, sex, marital status, registered domestic partner status, genetic information, sexual preference, sexual orientation, gender (including gender expression and gender identity), pregnancy (including childbirth or related medical conditions, including breastfeeding), military service, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, physical disability, mental disability, veteran status or any other protected classification under federal, state, or local law. All such decisions are based on (1) individual merit, qualifications, and competence as they relate to the particular position, and (2) promotion of the principle of equal employment opportunity.

All other terms and conditions of employment, such as compensation, benefits, transfers, layoff, return from layoff, training, education, and social and recreational programs, are administered without regard to the characteristics described above. To this end, Cumming Group complies with all provisions of Title VII

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