Director or Project Planning & Management is responsible for project management oversight for key major active development and pre-developments. In this role, the director will be responsible and empowered to ensure assigned projects are properly planned, managed and executed. The director will work cross divisionally and with the lead project developer to facilitate this management oversight.
Success at Westfield
Business Acumen
The successful candidate aligns behavior and actions with the Company culture by possessing a passion for work, promoting and adapting to change, initiating and promoting innovation, self-driven and leading with courage.
Interpersonal/Communication Skills
The successful candidate will be open minded with a natural curiosity and both customer/market and product oriented. Described as rigorous, result oriented, consistent and well organized. Maintains and fosters strong relationships internal and external clients.
Executing for Results
The successful candidate will demonstrate the ability to generate strategy and then transform into actionable plans with timely execution and accountability.
Leadership/Collaboration
Establishes and maintains positive work relationships, volunteers’ assistance, operates with integrity, supports others, and remains open to ideas. Drives colleagues to exceeding performance and heightened accountability.
Problem Solving
The successful candidate will be self-motivated and have a demonstrable record of acting upon and predicting complex problems to bring about resolution. Demonstrates eagerness and ability to learn quickly and leverages a flexible mindset in response to shifting dynamics, adversity and/or change.
Success in the Role
In order to be successful, the Director must have extensive knowledge of development, design and construction practices, experience with highly complex large-scale projects and knowledge of retail development. In addition to the commensurate experience, the Director must have strong leadership, communication and interpersonal skills to collaborate, manage and drive highly complex teams.
This role requires an astute level of discernment to determine when to manage and track at an executive level and when it’s necessary to take deep dives into any project particular items that need management or improvement. This position requires significant time-intensive collaboration and analysis. The successful candidate needs to have strong discipline, a strong work ethic, an inherent sense of process/procedures, the ability to analyze any issue to the lowest level of detail, but also the ability to be fluid and work in a dynamic highly volatile project environment. Candidate will be working long hours, but will benefit from the Westfield “Work Hard … Play Hard” approach.
Essential Duties
The Director position will be assigned to various active development and pre-development projects ranging in size between $250M-$1B in total development value. The Director will provide project management oversight of these projects and interface with the project teams, to manage and track the major activities for the development. The management oversight focus starts with ensuring the team has the proper overall project plan, project processes and resources to execute the project. The projects teams are then tracked and led by the PPM group to ensure the team is conforming to the overall project plan, required processes and ultimately achieving the projects objectives.
The Director’s main responsibility is to ensure projects are executed effectively, hold team members accountable and lead teams to solutions for project challenges.
In this role, the Director will perform the following duties:
Active Developments
- Help to develop the overall project plan and schedule with the project team to ensure all the key milestones are identified from Board approval to Grand Opening.
- Help to develop key project risks and ensure teams has plan and mitigation strategies to
- Perform independent assessments of project budgets and schedule to ensure the proper development and necessary resources are allocated to achieve the project objectives.
- Facilitate project kick-off meeting to ensure all project stakeholders are aligned and that project goals are clear and defined.
- Ensure project stakeholders at all times are communicating and making decisions collaboratively in the best interest of the business.
Chair the weekly team Action Meeting (similar to an OAC meeting). Key project stakeholders from each group Leasing, Center Management, Development, Design and Construction attend to collaborate on the key project issues.
- Track, document and author the meeting minutes from the Action Meeting and holding project participants accountable for their respective items.
- Developing and managing various reporting (as needed) to ensure project components are being executed. Reports will include both weekly and monthly reporting for both project based and corporate level information.
- Interface heavily with the Design and Construction project leads to ensure all design, procurement milestones and construction milestones are clearly identified and on schedule.
- Help design and construction teams to develop recovery strategies for changes or underperforming project components.
- Interfacing heavily with Leasing and Tenant Coordination to develop project specific milestones schedule for all leasing activities form Letter on Intents, Lease Execution, Tenant Design/Permit Deliverables and Tenant construction to ensure all tenants are on-track to make project grand opening.
- Collaborate with Leasing and Tenant Coordination to ensure diligent tracking of all Leasing/Tenant milestones are coordinate with entire team for various tenant milestone that could impact design, construction cost and schedule.
- Manage and track all Leasing/Tenant Coordination weekly reports to ensure accurate reports are being generated for tenant milestones.
- Ensure proper procedures and protocols for development and leasing changes are followed and necessary business approvals are obtained timely.
- Ensure project teams are continuously and accurately forecasting project costs and schedules.
- Elevate any project concerns related to resources, budget and/or schedule to the Head of Project Planning & Management to ensure the business is promptly aware of any project concerns or risks.
- Help facilitate interdepartmental collaboration and approvals to ensure timely decision-making is made and in the best interest of the project and business.
- Facilitate team collaboration for Grand Opening coordination, including helping to develop Grand Opening planning to ensure the team is prepared, communicating and successful in achieving the Grand Opening.
- Conduct post-project cross-departmental lessons learned workshop to capture areas in need of improvement and success stories. Develop comprehensive project debrief report clearly delineating items to improve and maintain. Present reports to executive department heads and other project teams as necessary to effectively share key take-aways. Develop KPI for projects and help to track/report in global database.
Active Pre-Developments
- Help to team to develop overall strategy for effective pre-development activities and prescribed schedule to get to board approval.
- Help team develop overall project plan including clear project objectives, development brief and appropriate project budget and schedule.
- Foster collaboration among department stakeholders to ensure all departments are effectively presented and aligned with project goals.
- Help to develop key project risks and ensure teams has plan and mitigation strategies to
- Perform independent assessments of project budgets and schedule to ensure the proper development and necessary resources are allocated to achieve the project objectives.
- Participate in monthly/quarterly department resource planning to ensure all departments, specifically development, design and construction have necessary staffing both internally and externally.
- Develop various types of predevelopment reporting as necessary for the business to understand project status, risks, areas of concern and decision making milestones, etc.
Projects will vary in geography and will be based in California including SF/San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego. As such, travel will be a requirement can be a frequent. Most travel is day-trips.
Essential Qualifications
- BA or BS degree in Architecture, Engineering or Construction Management.
- Minimum 15 years of prior development, construction and/or project management experience.
- Minimum 7-10 years of experience managing major projects in excess of $100M in construction value.
- Minimum 3-5 years of experience with Large Retail Developments $100M plus in construction value.
- Minimum 3-5 years of experience leading major projects in excess of $100M in construction value, managing all aspects from design, approvals, procurement, construction and implementation.
- Extensive experience with retail projects and a core understanding of the development, leasing and tenant coordination functions/interactions of retail developments.
- Experience with large-scale projects in active shopping centers
- Experience with large mixed-use projects including multi-family and office.
- Have basic understanding of development and finance activities related to project analysis/approval
- High Proficiency with software: Microsoft office (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint),
- Be extremely organized and process oriented.
- Be able to effectively handle heavy-workload, perform ‘heavy-lifting’ on majority of tasks and work hours as needed to perform responsibilities.
- Have high-sense of urgency and be driven to achieve business/project objectives
- Have inherent sense of collaboration but have confidence to lead and hold team participants accountable.
- Proactive, high energy, positive, can-do and team-oriented attitude
- Strong professional communication skills to interact with all internal and external professionals
- Strong written and grammatical skills and proof-reading ability
- Ability to Travel Frequently w/in California (SF/San Jose, Los Angeles, SD area).
Trips are typically day trips.
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