Senior Controls Specialist

Job Title: Senior Controls Specialist
Location: Calgary, AB – 50% travel to USA and other Canadian sites
Schedule: Mon-Fri, 8 hours/day
Start Date: ASAP
End Date: Dec 31, 2025 (potential for extensions)
Position Summary
As a Senior Controls Specialist, you are the enterprise leader of project and turnaround controls across company’s network—serving as a key contributor and subject-matter expert setting the standard, shaping practices, and guiding performance across all sites. You are the go-to authority for every control professional in the organization, ensuring adherence to established cost, schedule, and risk management standards, supporting performance and best practice implementation at project and site levels. As the go-to resource for controls professionals, you provide knowledge sharing and mentorship, harmonizing execution, and leading rigorous cost and turnaround event schedule management. Your collaboration with leaders and cross-functional teams ensures capital and turnaround projects are planned, executed, and reported with transparency and strategic readiness.
Site leaders, Event Managers, ETC Senior Managers, project teams, and SVP/VPs look to you for high-quality reports, detailed analysis, and actionable recommendations when cost, schedule, or risk challenges arise. You support and lead the development of integrated control frameworks; help resolve execution complexities; and contribute to continuous improvement initiatives. This role is suited to an experienced controls professional who thrives on delivering results through influence, technical skill, and strong cross-functional relationships.
Principal Job Duties & Responsibilities

• Act as the enterprise technical authority and subject matter expert on cost and schedule controls partnering with Turnaround Event Managers and ETC Senior Managers as a peer-level expert to establish event budgets, enforce standards, ensure actuals align with approved targets.
• Perform schedule variance analysis during execution—identifying risk areas, driving mitigation strategies, and mentoring site- and project-based cost professionals to strengthen event-level performance and decision-making.
• Accountable for the accuracy and organization of cost, schedule, and risk records—enabling   benchmarking and performance improvements.
• Monitor the effectiveness of cost and schedule controls during execution—escalating risks with significant exposure and, when necessary, challenging senior leaders with fact-based insights to protect the integrity of the event and uphold enterprise standards.
• Proactively track and analyze cost and schedule deviations, providing detailed reports and real-time recommendations to maintain financial control during execution.
• Accountable for the development and maintenance of detailed, resource-loaded turnaround schedules.
• Generate and present concise, data-driven progress reports summarizing event performance, including CPI, SPI, milestones, and risk areas.
• Lead data analysts and digital developers in building the infrastructure, tools, and visualizations that enable enterprise-wide cost and schedule control—owning the digital roadmap, advancing automation, and integrating emerging technologies such as AI to support real-time decision-making.
• Implement and maintain event-level document control systems that ensure audit-ready, secure access to current data and reports.
• Actively support event-level risk reviews; validate risk registers and mitigation plans with Turnaround Event Managers.
• Provide guidance and knowledge sharing to colleagues, supporting the skills and maturity of site-based controls professionals.
• Own the continuous improvement of the Corporate Project & Turnaround Controls Manual – providing updates on related procedures and best practices.
• Execution Support & Site Interface
• Governance & Strategy
• Own and update the Corporate Project & Turnaround Controls Manual, including WBS/coding taxonomy, estimate-class guidelines, phase-gate checklists, and digital tool protocols.
• Embed AACE’s 'Six Elements of Project Controls' framework to ensure sites operate with a clear understanding of scope, progress, and performance versus plan.
• Lead periodic reviews of program effectiveness and participate in cross-functional working groups to align controls initiatives with broader business needs.

Baseline & Planning

• Lead the development of integrated cost, schedule, and cash-flow baselines at FEL-3, control budget, and sanction gates.
• Approve SAP/Primavera coding structures to establish a single source of truth across systems.
• Facilitate cross-functional planning workshops to secure team alignment and resource-loaded, logic-based schedules.
• Champion the integrity of coding, planning templates, and baseline approval protocols.

• Cost Control & Forecasting
• Develop and maintain portfolio-level cost models that consolidate site data in real time—monitoring CPI, SPI, contingency drawdown, and cash flow to detect early signs of deviation and opportunity.
• Go beyond reporting: analyze cost and schedule variances, identify root causes, and provide site and enterprise leaders with clear, actionable recommendations to recover performance and protect margins.
• Guide sites through accruals, AFE alignment, and financial closeout activities—ensuring both accuracy and alignment with financial objectives.
• Schedule Assurance
• Uphold and audit contractor and internal standards for schedule development, assurance, and risk modelling support the evaluation and continuous improvement of schedule protocols; ensuring continuous visibility of the critical path
• Conduct Monte-Carlo simulations to assess schedule confidence levels and define recovery strategies.

Risk & Change Governance

• Utilize advanced statistical risk tools—including Monte Carlo simulation, linear programming, and probabilistic modeling—to quantify potential outcomes and identify key cost and schedule risk drivers across events.
• Translate risk data into clear narratives and actionable strategies for enterprise and site leaders, enabling smarter contingency planning and better-informed decisions.
• Maintain a living risk register, updated continuously through collaboration with site teams and event leadership, and drive alignment between risk exposure, mitigation planning, and contingency allocation.

• Reporting, Analytics & Decision Quality
• Lead cross-functional efforts with internal data and development teams (e.g., NBS Data Office) to build and sustain real-time, integrated analytics—enabling forward-looking visibility into cost and schedule health across SAP, P6, and other data sources.
• Serve as a strategic advisor to senior leaders by translating complex performance data into actionable insights—guiding decisions that drive recovery, optimize execution, and elevate enterprise outcomes.
• Own the architecture and evolution of enterprise dashboards for earned value, burn rate, productivity, and trend performance ensuring they enable not just awareness, but decisive action.
• Deliver program health reports and communicate improvement progress to management and stakeholders.
• Digital Enablement
• Develop and lead the execution of a multi-year digital roadmap for project and turnaround controls—including the integration of AI, machine learning, and advanced analytics to enhance forecasting, variance detection, and scenario modeling.
• Partner with IT and enterprise data teams to integrate Primavera and SAP through API-driven, automated pipelines—eliminating manual reporting and enabling real-time performance insights.
• Pilot and deploy robotic process automation (RPA), low-code platforms, and intelligent workflows that streamline controls execution and improve data quality across all events.
• Capability Building
• Champion the development of a skilled, enterprise-ready controls workforce by identifying capability gaps, defining core competencies, and setting the standard for what “good” looks like in cost and schedule management.
• Drive organization-wide awareness of the controls program by contributing and developing training, supporting onboarding activities, and mentoring practitioners in program requirements and best practices.
• Lead targeted skills development efforts—through coaching, applied training, and knowledge-sharing—that equip practitioners to go beyond transactional reporting and become true performance advisors.
• Uplift the maturity of site-based professionals by embedding best practices during planning and execution, reinforcing critical thinking, and correcting poor habits that undermine control quality.

Stakeholder & Vendor Engagement

• Act as the controls authority in contractor bid reviews, commercial negotiations, and claim resolution—providing data-backed insight to assess entitlement, validate impacts, and support fair, defensible outcomes.
• Regularly brief senior leadership (SVP Operations, Finance VPs, Joint Venture partners) on performance, risks, and improvement strategies.
• Communicate program changes and expectations to partners and stakeholders at all organizational levels.

• Continuous Improvement & Benchmarking
• Lead structured program reviews and benchmarking exercises.
• Publish quarterly controls-maturity scorecards; drive site-level improvement plans to elevate controls performance across the portfolio.
• Track and report on PMO-level KPIs such as cost variance, float erosion, and forecast accuracy, integrating outcomes into executive reviews and bonus metrics.

Qualifications:

• Expertise – 12+ years of senior-level project controls experience managing portfolios > C$250M, including turnarounds and capital execution.
• Program Governance – Demonstrated experience in maintaining standards, processes, and documentation for enterprise-scale programs.
• Collaboration & Influence – Ability to work cross-functionally to resolve challenges, align teams, and drive collective improvement.
• Integrity & Judgment – Trusted to bring clarity and honesty in politically sensitive situations. Balances technical expertise with emotional intelligence to navigate pressure, manage conflict, and make fact-based decisions that stand up to scrutiny.
• Leadership Influence – Trusted advisor to VPs and directors, with a track record of shaping policy, resolving contractor disputes, and driving accountability.
• Mentorship & Coaching – Proven ability to uplift teams; designs curricula, runs simulations, and builds lasting controls capability at site level.
• Systems Integration – Mastery of Primavera P6, SAP/Oracle FI-CO, Power BI, and Azure data tools; capable of architecting and automating enterprise reporting pipelines.
• Analytical Agility – Strong grasp of earned-value analysis, schedule risk modeling, trend diagnostics, and Monte-Carlo forecasting.
• Change & Risk Authority – Experienced in leading cross-functional risk reviews and managing high-volume change controls in fast-paced environments.
• Financial Acumen – Deep understanding of cost capitalization, accrual processes, AFE workflows, and their alignment with IFRS/US-GAAP standards.
• Strategic Improvement – Benchmarks against industry best (IPA, AACE); drives data-informed change and embeds discipline to eliminate planning bias.
• Professional Credentials – Degree in Engineering, Finance, Business, Construction Management, or a related field; AACE CCP/PSP or PMI PMP required. Lean Six Sigma Black Belt is an asset.

Impact Statement
By fulfilling these expectations, the Senior Controls Specialist plays an essential role in enabling company to deliver complex turnaround events with accuracy, transparency, and confidence. Through strong adherence to governance, adoption of digital innovation and people development, and leading support for controls capability building, this role drives cost and schedule certainty, uplifts enterprise maturity, and ensures strategic readiness across the network.

With over 90 years' combined experience, NES Fircroft (NES) is proud to be the world's leading engineering staffing provider spanning the Oil & Gas, Power & Renewables, Chemicals, Construction & Infrastructure, Life Sciences, Mining and Manufacturing sectors worldwide. With more than 80 offices in 45 countries, we are able to provide our clients with the engineering and technical expertise they need, wherever and whenever it is needed. We offer contractors far more than a traditional recruitment service, supporting with everything from securing visas and work permits, to providing market-leading benefits packages and accommodation, ensuring they are safely and compliantly able to support our clients.