Engineering Planning Programme Director — Backlog-to-Forecast Architecture

The mandate

An engineering business forecasts from a mixture of commercial backlog, programme-manager estimates and resource spreadsheets that do not share a reliable phase structure. Finance can consolidate the totals but cannot consistently explain why a delayed milestone changes revenue, labour demand or cash. The programme director will construct the accepted backlog-to-forecast architecture for selected engineering programmes. The deliverable is a controlled driver model, assumptions register and operating method, not a new planning application or an executive mandate to select projects. Six months of concentrated consulting begins on 26 October 2026.

The diagnostic milestone on 30 November 2026 will reconcile selected order populations, programme phases and billing terms with quantified gaps. A tested driver design is due on 12 February 2027, demonstrating how phase movement affects resource demand, earned revenue assumptions and billing timing across agreed historical cases. Final transfer on 26 April 2027 includes two internally run forecast cycles, a revised operating guide and resolved acceptance findings. Backlog certainty, delivery progress and invoice eligibility must remain separate drivers; combining them into one percentage-complete assumption would recreate the ambiguity the project is intended to remove.

The business finance director and programme-controls lead accept the artifacts. Diagnostic acceptance requires population totals tied to agreed commercial and financial records, with explicit exclusions. Design tests include delayed customer acceptance, changed resource estimates, partial billing and cancelled scope. The final model must reproduce the agreed forecast bridge, expose assumption changes and be operated by internal planners without consultant adjustments. Payment is 25% for the accepted diagnostic, 35% for tested design and 40% for transfer. Fees are not contingent on improved revenue, successful project completion or a customer accepting a disputed invoice.

The sponsor provides contract summaries, approved accounting rules, resource records, programme history and thirteen assigned contributors. Three days weekly are reserved, including Pune workshops and scheduled Chennai reviews. Contract negotiation, technical programme recovery, accounting-policy approval and software implementation are excluded. Additional programmes or driver families require written scope and fee changes. The architecture should be sufficiently precise for finance challenge but practical for programme managers to maintain. Internal ownership of source changes and assumptions is essential, because a model that works only when its author interprets every phase has not been successfully transferred.

What you will own

• Reconcile the selected engineering backlog to commercial and financial control totals, recording cancelled, conditional and changed orders so the planning population does not begin with an unexplained pipeline-to-backlog assumption.
• Define the programme-phase and driver architecture with resource and billing owners, separating delivery progress, accounting assumptions and invoice eligibility before those events are combined into a forecast output.
• Construct the controlled model and assumptions register with traceable source ownership, enabling planners to distinguish a revised delivery estimate from a commercial change or a different accounting input.
• Test the design against agreed historical and exception cases, demonstrating the forecast consequences of slippage, partial billing and scope cancellation without using manual overrides to force agreement with the prior plan.
• Facilitate two forecast cycles led by internal planners and programme controls, capturing failed ownership or interpretation tests before acceptors decide that the architecture is ready for operational use.
• Transfer the operating guide, model maintenance and change controls with worked examples, ensuring future programme-phase changes trigger an explicit review rather than silently invalidating the financial planning logic.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate FP&A or business-finance work in engineering, manufacturing or programme-led businesses where backlog, resource demand and customer milestones affect forecasts differently. Describe a model you rebuilt because the original percentage-complete logic obscured the economic events. Explain the source populations, driver distinctions and test cases, including how you treated cancelled or conditional orders rather than merely documenting them as exceptions.
• Bring twelve to eighteen years in finance, with Chartered Accountancy training and strong forecasting, variance analysis and operating-plan experience. You must reconcile management models to financial records while working from accounting rules supplied by the authorised owner. The required judgement includes knowing when a forecast change is a planning assumption, a commercial event or an accounting-policy matter that needs separate approval.
• Evidence consulting or transformation delivery in which internal finance users reproduced the finished method. Show your milestone acceptance tests and the way you exposed source weaknesses without hiding them behind an apparently balanced consolidation. Practical model discipline, version control and understandable driver design matter more than familiarity with any particular planning product when the core task is architecture and transfer.
• Reserve three days weekly across six months and work effectively with programme managers, resource owners and commercial teams whose definitions may conflict. Describe how you resolved an ownership disagreement, constrained scope expansion and coached planners through independent live cycles. Protect contract and customer information while preserving enough evidence for a reviewer to trace each material assumption and its forecast consequence.

Application

Applications for this mandate are received in one way only: through the India Board Terminal's application process. It is automated end to end. Your Executive Passport travels to the mandate holder in its confidential form, your answers to the three questions below are read before anything else in your file, and every stage that follows is recorded on your applications page.

There is no address to write to and no intermediary to call. The mandate holder reads what the Terminal delivers and nothing else, which is what keeps the process the same for every applicant and keeps your name out of it until you release it. Applications close on 8 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-CON-2026-IND-041.