Senior Project Manager Construction
Role Overview
Assignment Type: Initial 3-year contract
Location: Lulea, Sweden
Work Schedule: Monday - Friday
The Senior Construction Project Manager is responsible for the day-to-day management, oversight, and performance assurance of a large construction partner across multiple construction packages on a major capital project. The role ensures the construction partner delivers in strict adherence to the contract in all respects, including scope, deliverables, schedule, budget, quality, safety, and reporting obligations.
In parallel, the role provides leadership of the owner-side construction management who execute the oversight, coordination, and site-level assurance activities across all construction areas.
The position sits on the owner/client side and acts as the primary interface between the project organisation and the construction partner, providing commercial, contractual, and technical oversight across all phases from mobilisation through to completion and handover.
Key Responsibilities
Contract and Commercial Management
- Manage the construction partner's performance against the contract, ensuring all deliverables, milestones, and obligations are met in accordance with the agreed terms and conditions.
- Manage project teams performance against the contract, ensuring all deliverables, milestones, and obligations are met in accordance with the agreed terms and conditions.
- Lead the administration of the construction contract, including scope verification, progress certification, payment applications, contract correspondence, and formal notices in cooperation with contract managers.
- Review, assess, and process (or challenge) all variations, change orders, and claims submitted by the construction partner, ensuring appropriate substantiation and alignment with contractual entitlements.
- Maintain a register of all contractual events, notices, and time-critical obligations, ensuring the project organisation responds within stipulated timeframes, with support from contract management.
- Coordinate with the project's commercial and legal teams on dispute avoidance strategies, pre-claim positioning, and formal dispute resolution processes where required.
- Monitor and control the construction partner's cost performance against the contract value and approved budget, identifying and escalating deviations early.
Schedule and Progress Oversight
- Scrutinise the construction partner's baseline and updated construction schedules, challenging logic, durations, resource loading, and critical path assumptions.
- Monitor physical progress against the approved schedule and contractual milestones, identifying slippage and requiring recovery plans where performance is below target.
- Chair or co-chair regular progress meetings with the construction partner, ensuring actions are captured, tracked, and closed.
- Prepare and present progress reports to the project steering committee, including status on scope, schedule, cost, risk, and key contractual matters.
Scope, Quality, and Deliverables
- Ensure the construction partner's works are executed in accordance with the approved design, specifications, and quality requirements.
- Review and approve (or reject) key construction deliverables including method statements, inspection and test plans, quality records, and as-built documentation.
- Manage the interface between the construction partner and the engineering/design organisation, ensuring timely resolution of technical queries, RFIs, and design changes.
- Oversee the construction partner's compliance with safety, environmental, and regulatory requirements, escalating non-conformances through formal channels.
Governance, Reporting, and Stakeholder Management
- Prepare and lead the agenda for steering committee meetings with the construction partner, covering progress, risks, commercial status, and escalated issues.
- Maintain structured and auditable project records of all correspondence, meeting minutes, instructions, and decisions related to the construction partner.
- Provide regular reporting to the Project Director and senior leadership on the construction partner's performance, contractual exposure, and forecast outturn.
- Build and maintain a constructive but firm working relationship with the construction partner's leadership, ensuring accountability while preserving collaboration.
- Coordinate with construction area project managers, OEM representatives, and project functions (engineering, procurement, commissioning) to manage interdependencies.
Cooperation with the Construction Management Team
- Provide leadership as needed to the owner-side construction management teams, including area/package construction managers, field engineers, site coordinators, inspectors, and contract administrators.
- Plan and manage the mobilisation and demobilisation of construction management resources (both employees and partner teams) together with the line manager for the construction management team, in line with the project's construction phasing and contractor programme.
- Act as the escalation point for construction management teams on matters relating to contractor performance, contractual interpretation, technical disputes, and resource conflicts.
Required Qualifications and Experience
- Bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering, Construction Management, Quantity Surveying, or a related discipline.
- Minimum 15 years of experience in construction management on large-scale industrial, infrastructure, or energy projects (project values exceeding 500M EUR).
- Proven experience in cooperating with multi-disciplinary construction management teams of 10+ personnel, including area managers, field engineers, inspectors, and contract administrators. Experience from cooperating with construction management and engineering teams and understanding of interfaces.
- Demonstrated experience managing or overseeing major construction contractors on the owner/client side, not solely contractor-side experience.
- Strong working knowledge of standard construction contract forms (FIDIC, NEC, AB04, or equivalent) including claims, variations, delay analysis, and dispute resolution mechanisms.
- Proven track record of commercial and contract administration in a construction context, including assessment of payment applications, evaluation of change orders, and management of contractual correspondence.
- Experience preparing for and leading steering committee presentations and executive-level reporting on contractor performance.
- Working proficiency in construction scheduling tools (Primavera P6, MS Project) and project controls systems.
Preferred Qualifications
- Postgraduate qualification or professional certification in Project Management (PMP, PRINCE2) or Contract Management (FIDIC, RICS, CIOB, CCM).
- Experience on greenfield industrial megaprojects (steel, mining, petrochemical, energy, or similar heavy industry).
- Familiarity with Nordic or European construction market practices and regulatory frameworks.
- Fluency in English; additional Nordic or European languages are advantageous.
- Experience working in multi-cultural, multi-contractor project environments with complex interfaces between civil works, OEM equipment supply, and process commissioning.