Project Controls Director

What is the Opportunity?

Aecon is seeking a Project Controls Director to join the Urban Transportations Solutions group to support dynamic, transit projects in Canada. We are proud to support projects that are committed to faster and more convenient travel, ultimately improving transportation experiences. This starts with bringing aboard the best possible team!

Reporting to the Project Director, the Project Controls Director will provide a single, integrated view of project performance - cost, schedule, risk, data structure, and reporting - to keep the project on track and enable timely decision-making

This opportunity is part of Aecon UTS’ proactive talent pipelining as the business continues to expand across major transit projects. We are engaging passive, high-calibre leaders in the market to build relationships ahead of upcoming project awards.

What You Will Do Here:

• Lead the project controls function for collaborative delivery models such as Alliance, Progressive Design-Build, CMGC, and other open-book or target-price environments, ensuring alignment with project objectives, commercial frameworks, and governance requirements.
• Develop, implement, and maintain the Project Controls Management Plan, defining the project’s approach to cost management, schedule management, estimating, change control, risk management, earned value, reporting, and forecasting.
• Establish the project’s data structure early in the development phase, including Work Breakdown Structure, Cost Breakdown Structure, and other related control structures, and maintain integrity of those structures throughout the full project lifecycle.
• Build and maintain integrated cost, schedule, risk, and performance management systems that provide a single, reliable view of project status and future outlook to support informed decision-making.
• Lead development and maintenance of project budgets, cost baselines, commitment tracking, accruals, forecasts, contingency usage, and estimate at completion, ensuring timely visibility into financial performance and emerging trends.
• Lead development and maintenance of integrated project schedules across design, procurement, construction, systems installation, testing, commissioning, and closeout, including critical path analysis, resource planning, schedule quality reviews, and recovery planning.
• Establish progress measurement strategies, including rules of credit, productivity tracking, earned value methodologies, and variance verification processes to ensure performance is measured consistently and accurately.
• Implement and maintain Earned Value Management practices to monitor cost and schedule performance, analyze CPI, SPI, SV, and EAC movements, and provide meaningful insight into the drivers behind project results.
• Support Target Value Delivery and target proposal development through continuous estimating, trend management, cost modeling, risk integration, and alignment of target cost, schedule, contingency, and commercial assumptions.
• Lead the estimating process through development and delivery, ensuring estimates are progressively refined as scope matures, quantities are verified, pricing is tested, and risk is incorporated into the overall forecast and target price.
• Own the project’s quantitative risk program, including QCRA, QSRA, Monte Carlo analysis, risk registers, confidence modeling, and integration of risk outputs into cost, schedule, and contingency strategies.
• Establish and lead risk governance cadences, facilitate risk reviews, support risk owners in defining mitigation actions, and ensure risks are escalated appropriately with transparent reporting of exposure and confidence levels.
• Lead development and implementation of the project-specific change management plan, ensuring scope changes, trend items, baseline changes, contingency draws, and budget transfers are identified, evaluated, approved, and reported in accordance with contract requirements and internal standards.
• Deliver integrated reporting and analytics that clearly connect cost, schedule, risk, progress, and change, including executive-level performance narratives, monthly status reporting, dashboarding, milestone reviews, and leadership presentations.
• Produce clear, fact-based reporting for project leadership, joint venture stakeholders, and client representatives, highlighting performance drivers, forecast movements, risks, and required decisions or corrective actions.
• Lead project controls meetings and reporting cadences to communicate project status, challenge assumptions, align stakeholders, and drive timely corrective actions where performance issues arise.
• Partner closely with project leadership, commercial, procurement, design, construction, finance, and client-side controls teams to ensure project controls are integrated into day-to-day project execution rather than functioning as a separate reporting exercise.
• Support commercial and procurement teams with subcontractor claims assessments, client claims development, variations, negotiations, and dispute support by ensuring cost, schedule, and risk impacts are properly quantified and documented.
• Build strong working relationships with contracting authority counterparts, owner-side controls teams, joint venture partners, and internal stakeholders to support transparent reporting, shared data confidence, and productive issue resolution.
• Lead and develop a high-performing project controls team across planning, scheduling, cost control, estimating, risk, change management, and reporting, providing coaching, performance feedback, and development support.
• Foster a team culture grounded in accountability, analytical discipline, continuous improvement, inclusion, and a best-for-project mindset that supports collaborative project outcomes.

What You Bring to The Team:

• 15+ years of progressive project controls experience on major infrastructure programs, with significant experience on large-scale transit, rail, heavy civil, or comparable complex projects.
• Minimum 5 years in a senior project controls leadership role such as Project Controls Director, Project Controls Lead, or equivalent on projects exceeding $500M.
• Demonstrated experience across the full project lifecycle, including pursuit, development, advancement, target proposal, implementation, testing and commissioning, and closeout.
• Proven success leading integrated project controls functions across cost, schedule, estimating, risk, earned value, change management, and reporting on multi-year, multi-disciplinary programs.
• Strong experience working within collaborative contracting models such as Alliance, Progressive Design-Build, DB, CMGC, or other open-book delivery frameworks, with a clear understanding of how commercial structure influences controls strategy, forecasting, reporting, and decision-making.
• Advanced knowledge of Project Controls Management Plans, governance structures, project data setup, reporting cadences, progress claiming strategies, productivity measurement, variance analysis, forecasting, and baseline management.
• Strong capability in establishing and maintaining project data structures, including WBS, CBS, and related control structures that support integrated cost, schedule, and reporting requirements.
• Excellent command of cost control, including budget development, commitment tracking, accruals, earned value, forecasting, trend management, reforecasting, contingency control, estimate at completion, and variance analysis.
• Advanced scheduling capability, including Primavera P6 planning, critical path method, resource loading, schedule optimization, schedule quality analysis, basis of schedule development, milestone management, and schedule recovery planning.
• Strong experience with integrated scheduling approaches spanning design, procurement, construction, systems integration, and commissioning.
• Demonstrated experience in risk management, including risk identification, qualitative and quantitative analysis, Monte Carlo simulation, risk governance, contingency planning, and integration of risk with change control and forecasting.
• Hands-on experience with QCRA, QSRA, and confidence-based forecasting methodologies in complex project environments.
• Strong experience supporting Target Value Delivery, continuous estimating, trend control, target price development, and integration of risk, schedule, and cost into target proposals.
• Proven ability to produce and defend target price or target cost proposals, including deterministic base estimates, contingency recommendations, and integrated cost and schedule risk analyses.
• Strong reporting and analytics capability, including executive reporting, project health dashboards, milestone reviews, and performance storytelling that clearly communicates project status and required decisions.
• Experience coordinating with client-side project controls teams and joint venture partners in transparent reporting environments where alignment on data structure, progress measurement, and performance interpretation is critical.
• Strong commercial and financial acumen, including understanding the relationship between forecast accuracy, contingency use, gainshare/painshare outcomes, margin performance, change management, and claims exposure.
• Ability to support commercial teams on change orders, claims, variations, and disputes by accurately assessing and communicating cost and schedule impacts.
• Proven leadership experience building, developing, and managing multi-disciplinary project controls teams, including planners, schedulers, cost controllers, risk analysts, estimators, and reporting specialists.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to present complex technical and commercial information clearly to executives, project teams, clients, and partners.
• Strong judgment, analytical rigour, and problem-solving capability, with a track record of identifying issues early, quantifying impacts, and recommending practical corrective actions.
• Proficiency in Primavera P6 and strong working knowledge of project controls, ERP, and reporting tools such as EcoSys, InEight, SAP, Safran Risk, Power BI, or equivalent platforms.
• Undergraduate degree in Engineering, Business, Quantity Surveying, Construction Management, or a related discipline, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• PMP, PSP, CCP, AACE, or equivalent professional designation considered an asset.
• Commitment to continuous professional development, industry best practices, and a culture of inclusion, collaboration, and accountability.

Reason for vacancy: Proactive/Evergreen