Project Planner

Mercury is the European leader in construction solutions.

We build and manage complex engineering & construction projects for the world’s leading corporations.

Our solutions help deliver technologies and life changing advancements that connect people, communities, and businesses, giving them the power to achieve incredible things.

Our people have the courage to be innovative.

Their determination and sharp focus enable us to deliver with certainty, time and time again.

We deliver our clients’ visions through leading edge construction solutions across multiple sectors, including Enterprise Data Centres, Advanced Technology & Life Sciences, Hyperscale Data Centres, Fire Protection.

At Mercury, it is our duty to encourage and back our people to realise their vision of themselves.

We place them at the heart of what we do, providing challenging opportunities to develop within a great team in a supportive environment that allows them to reach their full potential.

Key Responsibilities of the Role

• Responsible for a project or portfolio of projects (regional / sectoral), acting as the primary planning point of contact for the assigned scope, ensuring all planning deliverables are produced, maintained, and communicated in line with project requirements.
• Responsible for all aspects of planning, as defined by the Planning Department Guidelines, including schedule development, progress measurement, reporting, analysis, and stakeholder engagement, ensuring full compliance with internal standards, procedures, and client specifications.
• Reporting to the Planning Department on all functional planning matters, including schedule quality, KPI performance, tool usage, and adherence to planning standards and best practices.
• Reporting to Business Unit / Project Management on project-specific planning matters, including programme status, risks, milestone forecasts, and resource requirements, ensuring alignment between planning outputs and project delivery objectives.
• Developing and maintaining schedules for pre-construction / construction / commissioning phases using Primavera P6 (or equivalent scheduling software), ensuring schedules are logic-driven, resource loaded where required, and reflective of the agreed construction methodology, procurement strategy, and contract milestones.
• Developing and maintaining progress databases to capture physical progress across all disciplines and work packages, ensuring data integrity, consistency of measurement methods, and alignment with the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and schedule coding structures.
• Earned Value Management (EVM) systems – supporting the implementation and maintenance of EVM where contractually required or adopted by the project, including calculation and reporting of key metrics such as SE, PE.
• Preparation of tender schedules to support the estimating and bid process, developing realistic and competitive programmes that reflect the proposed methodology, resource strategy, procurement timelines, and contract milestones.
• Preparation of histograms for labour, plant, and other resources to support programme narratives, tender submissions, resource planning, and mobilisation/demobilisation strategies.
• Leading planning meetings at project level, setting agendas, facilitating discussion on schedule status, risks, and lookahead activities, and ensuring actions are captured, assigned, and followed up.
• Supporting weekly workface planning systems, collaborating with site supervision and project teams to develop short-interval plans (e. g., 1-week / 3-week lookaheads) that translate the master schedule into executable daily and weekly work plans.
• Assisting in the preparation of claims and providing data for contractual disputes, including preparation of delay analysis (e. g., time impact analysis, as-planned vs. as-built, windows analysis), supporting Extension of Time (EOT) submissions, and providing schedule-based evidence for dispute resolution.
• All other duties associated with the role, including participation in continuous improvement initiatives, contribution to the development of planning tools, templates, and procedures, and support of wider departmental and organisational objectives.

Essential Criteria for the Role

• Minimum 3+ years’ planning or project controls experience within a construction, engineering, or project delivery environment, preferably including exposure to large-scale or mission-critical projects.
• Good working knowledge of project delivery from design, procurement, and construction through commissioning, handover, and close-out, with an understanding of how planning supports each project phase.
• High level of proficiency in Primavera P6, with the ability to develop, update and maintain project programmes, lookahead schedules, progress updates, and reporting extracts under the guidance of senior planning personnel.
• Ability to support programme logic development, sequencing, baseline updates, progress measurement, milestone tracking, critical path review, and schedule quality checks.
• Good understanding of Earned Value Management principles, schedule variance analysis, productivity tracking, and the role of progress data in project controls and performance reporting.
• Strong Microsoft Excel capability, including the ability to manage, analyse and present programme related data, progress metrics, trackers, and reporting information in a clear and structured format.
• Ability to prepare and maintain lookahead reports, progress narratives, milestone trackers, constraint logs, procurement trackers, and planning input for weekly or monthly project reporting cycles.

Mercury is an equal opportunities employer.