Start up Review Manager in Sydney

The work you do here reaches further than your job description. At CIMIC, we are the team behind the operating companies that deliver some of the most significant infrastructure projects across Australia and the Asia Pacific. We connect capability, expertise and services across the Group, helping CPB Contractors, UGL, Leighton Asia, Sedgman, Pacific Partnerships and EIC Activities focus on the work only they can do.

The Start‑Up & Review Manager is accountable for ensuring the consistent, best‑practice establishment and independent review of major projects from contract award through to completion. The role provides assurance that projects are set up for successful delivery through compliant ERP configuration, robust project controls, reliable baseline schedules, and disciplined cost, risk, and commercial management frameworks.

By driving improved time and cost forecasting, strengthening earned value maturity, and confirming alignment with contractual obligations and entitlements, the role enables early identification of performance risks and supports timely corrective interventions. Working collaboratively across Operating Companies, ensuring projects commence with a high level of delivery confidence.

Role responsibilities:

• Manage and deliver the consistent application of approved start up, transition, and review processes during the phase between project award and commencement of site activities across assigned projects.
• Undertake detailed assurance and validation of project setup, including:
• Correct and consistent ERP configuration (SAP and JD Edwards) in line with approved frameworks.
• Alignment of work breakdown structures, cost codes, and control accounts.
• Adequacy and integrity of baseline P6 schedules and Bills of Quantities.
• Accuracy and compliance of blue collar payroll setup.
• Participate in OpCo major project start up and performance reviews, conducting analysis to identify emerging risks, capability gaps, and variances between planned and actual performance.
• Maintain active oversight of programme and cost performance versus approved baselines on assigned projects, undertaking root cause analysis of variances and supporting corrective action development.
• Monitor project performance trends and contribute to continuous improvement in time and cost forecasting accuracy through disciplined controls and data driven insights.
• Support the uplift of project teams’ understanding of cost management and earned value principles, reinforcing the linkage between scope, quantities, resources, and planned value.
• Assist OpCo leadership and commercial teams to confirm that contractual obligations are being met and that commercial rights and entitlements are identified and escalated as required, including advising the Group Manager of material or emerging contractual risks.
• Work collaboratively across OpCos to promote consistency, share lessons learned, and support outcomes that are in the best interests of CIMIC projects.

Your Experience:

• Bachelor's degree in business, engineering, quantity surveying or a related field.
• Postgraduate qualification in business or engineering, with at least 10 years' experience, including 5 years at management level.
• Significant experience delivering major infrastructure projects across the CIMIC portfolio.
• Proven experience Leading the Projects Start Up, Transition & Reviews function in a complex, major industrial Tier One organisation.
• Direct experience in sectors related to CIMIC’s business such as construction, engineering infrastructure, mining and telecommunications.
• Engineering and construction project tender and delivery experience.

Capabilities:

• High-level relationship management and communication skills across a broad range of stakeholders.
• Sharp analytical and problem-solving ability, turning complex project data into clear insight and decisive action.
• Demonstrated capability to drive and implement transformational change.
• Ensure compliance with all relevant legal and regulatory requirements and all relevant Group policies and processes.
• Strong financial and cost management skills, with the ability to build and challenge cost forecasts, cash flow and margin positions on complex, multi-package projects.
• Confidence in providing timely, credible input to senior stakeholders on matters that may materially affect project performance or delivery confidence.
• Equally effective working independently and as part of a team, leading across Operating Companies and Business Units without relying on direct authority.

CIMIC is the central enabling function for the CIMIC Group. Finance, People and Culture, Legal, HSEQ, IT, Strategy, Commercial and Risk, Corporate Affairs and Communications, and Audit professionals, working together so that the Group's operating companies can deliver some of the most significant projects and operations across Australia and the Asia Pacific.

We sit within one of the world’s leading construction and infrastructure groups. ACS and HOCHTIEF. A network that spans major markets globally and is growing in the sectors that will define the next decade: AI and Digital Infrastructure, Defence and Security, Energy and Nuclear, and Critical Minerals.

One Group, One Team is how we work. Not duplicated functions, but shared capability and expertise applied consistently across the Group. Built on expertise. Delivered at scale.

What we offer:

• Career mobility across operating companies, sectors and functions, with pathways to CPB Contractors, UGL, Leighton Asia, Sedgman, Pacific Partnerships and EIC Activities.
• Access to ACS University, providing leadership development, executive education and learning opportunities across the ACS global network.
• A culture built on the Group Principles: Integrity, Accountability, Innovation and Delivery, with Safety underpinning everything.
• The Accountable Leadership program, a Group-wide framework that creates shared language and shared standards for how we lead and perform.
• The opportunity to work with specialists at the top of their fields, on projects and operations that reach communities and industries across Australia and beyond.