Capital-Project ERP Redesign Director

The mandate

Each major project uses a different work breakdown, cost code, procurement package and progress convention, while the ERP receives summarised journals long after operational choices occur. Commitments, approved changes, quantities installed and forecast-to-complete therefore cannot be reconciled. The defined problem is to redesign process and data so project leaders see emerging margin and cash exposure without imposing a finance model that ignores how engineering and construction work is actually controlled.

The deliverables are a project-control decision model, core entity and coding architecture, process blueprint, control-and-reconciliation design, representative project template, migration principles and investment roadmap. The work must connect contract scope, engineering deliverables, quantities, schedule, procurement commitments, subcontract, change, progress, cost, billing and forecast. It must distinguish common enterprise evidence from client- or asset-specific structures that legitimately vary.

Four milestones run across six months: week five accepts the failure anatomy and comparable project baseline; week twelve approves target entities, crosswalks and decision processes; week nineteen completes a live-project design simulation from change to margin forecast; and week twenty-six delivers the template, rollout sequence, governance, capability and funding dossier. Billing follows the four accepted milestone outcomes.

Acceptance requires project, commercial and finance leaders to reconcile sampled scope, commitment, progress, cost and forecast without offline translation; changes must preserve source authority and effective date; and two contrasting projects must configure the target rules without corrupting comparability. Executives also require a migration treatment for active contracts, explicit control ownership and evidence that field reporting burden is reduced rather than duplicated.

The client provides project structures, contracts, schedules, quantity and progress records, procurement commitments, cost ledgers, change logs, forecasts, billing evidence, ERP configuration and site access. The consultant does not certify progress, approve forecasts, interpret contracts, choose an ERP product, configure production, renegotiate subcontractors or operate project controls. Authorised project and financial officers own those conclusions.

Why this is external work

Projects defend local structures because they carry client commitments, while finance seeks common coding to consolidate performance and ERP teams seek stable configuration. Prior design sessions forced agreement at a level too abstract to guide field decisions. External leadership can follow real scope and money through project work, preserve necessary variation and establish common evidence where comparability and control genuinely matter.

What you will own

• Map decisions linking contract scope, engineering deliverables, work packages, quantities, schedule, commitments, progress, cost and forecast.
• Define authoritative entities, identifiers, hierarchies, effective dates and crosswalks across project-control and enterprise records.
• Separate enterprise standards from client, asset, contracting-model and execution variations with explicit decision criteria.
• Design processes for baseline, commitment, accrual, progress, change, forecast, billing and margin recognition with control ownership.
• Simulate a representative change from notice and quantity through procurement, schedule, cost, cash and forecast consequence.
• Establish reconciliation evidence and exception ownership that eliminates late spreadsheet bridges without duplicating field input.
• Deliver the project template, active-contract migration principles, governance, capability plan and sequenced investment case.

Candidate qualifications

• Has redesigned ERP and project-control data for large engineering, construction or capital-project delivery organisations.
• Understands work breakdowns, quantities, earned progress, procurement commitments, subcontracts, change, forecasting, billing and margin.
• Can preserve client and asset variation while creating enterprise comparability and traceable consolidation evidence.
• Has connected field and engineering events to financial outcomes without imposing duplicate reporting or retrospective journal fixes.
• Can challenge project, commercial, finance and technology leaders using one representative project from scope through forecast.
• Produces blueprints detailed enough for implementation procurement without becoming dependent on a preferred ERP product.

Non-negotiables

• Will work onsite in Riyadh and complete monthly project observations and both executive design councils.
• Must disclose relationships with contractors, project-control vendors, ERP publishers, integrators and relevant clients or subcontractors.
• Brings live capital-project process and data redesign; corporate finance ERP design alone is insufficient.
• Will not treat unverified progress, unresolved change or summarised journals as authoritative project performance evidence.

1. 49 words maximum. Which project-control entity must connect scope change to margin forecast, and how?
2. 49 words maximum. How would you preserve client work-breakdown variation without losing enterprise comparability?
3. 49 words maximum. What field burden would prove the target ERP process has merely duplicated reporting?