Project Manager (IT Transformation)

Positive Employment is currently recruiting for a Project Manager for our client a government organisation in Portsmouth.

The organisation is embarking on a major transformation of its Housing Management services, replacing a complex mix of ageing systems with a single, modern, cloud-hosted Housing Management System (HMS). This high-profile project will play a significant role in improving services for more than 15,000 households across the city.

The new HMS will bring together all Portsmouth Homes tenancy, property, and asset information into one secure, modern platform, improving data accuracy, strengthening compliance, and enabling smarter, real-time decision-making. It will also provide improved customer experience, giving residents access to online services and enabling staff to work more efficiently with better tools and streamlined processes.

This is an exciting opportunity to join a programme with strong organizational backing, clear strategic drivers, and a wide impact across Housing, Repairs & Maintenance, Community Safety, and Corporate IT. The post holder will help deliver a modern SaaS solution that supports regulatory standards, drives digital transformation, and creates a resilient technical foundation for future service improvement.

This role is a temporary contract initially for 24 months with the possibility to extend. This role has flexibility for remote working with occasional requirement to work onsite in the Portsmouth offices or in a local housing office in either Somerstown, Paulsgrove or Leigh Park.

Duties and Responsibilities but not limited to:

• Lead full lifecycle delivery of Portsmouth Homes Housing Management System (HMS) transformation, from mobilisation through tender, implementation, testing, cutover, and post-go-live stabilisation.
• Provide line management and day-to-day leadership for project delivery resources, including the Project Coordinator, Data Lead, Business Analyst, Test Lead and any contracted specialists, ensuring clear accountability, prioritisation, and effective collaboration across all workstreams.
• Function as the primary bridge between Housing, IT & Digital, Data, Procurement, Finance, corporate governance teams, external suppliers, and delivery partners, ensuring effective communication, aligned priorities, and timely decision-making.
• Drive strategic alignment with PCC’s cloud, data protection, information governance, cyber security, and IT architectural standards, ensuring project alignment across all required IT checkpoints such as IT Change Board (CAB) and Architecture Review Board (ARB).
• Work with Portsmouth Homes stakeholders to ensure the new HMS fully supports regulatory and compliance requirements.
• Own and manage the programme plan, overseeing scope, milestones, interdependencies, risks, issues, budget, change control and resource planning, ensuring effective reporting into project and governance boards.
• Lead procurement engagement where required, ensuring supplier deliverables meet contractual expectations.
• Oversee all technical and functional workstreams, including data cleansing, migration from multiple legacy systems, integrations with Repairs, Community Safety, Finance and corporate platforms, environment management, and configuration.
• Manage testing cycles end-to-end, including SIT, UAT, defect tracking, quality assurance, and readiness assessments to ensure a robust and stable solution at go-live.
• Coordinate business change and transformation activity, ensuring redesigned processes, operating models, and workflows are embedded and aligned with the Council’s wider digital ambitions.
• Lead organisational readiness, including training planning and delivery, user support models, communications, impact assessments, and transition to BAU support teams, including Hand Over to Service (HOTS) activities with IT.
• Championing data quality and governance, working with data owners and analysts to establish a single authoritative dataset, improve reporting capability, and support emerging regulatory expectations.

Personal Requirements:

• Proven history of delivering complex housing-focused IT system implementations, including large-scale data migrations from multiple legacy platforms.
• Hands-on experience with major housing technologies, including NEC Housing, Microsoft Dynamics 365, or similar enterprise-grade HMS solutions.
• Strong understanding of end-to-end landlord services, including tenancy management, allocations, repairs and maintenance, rents, asset management, and associated compliance workflows.
• Practical experience working with cloud-hosted SaaS environments, including configuration, integration, security, and vendor-managed delivery models.
• Robust knowledge of project governance, including change control, risk and issue management, cutover planning, and quality assurance across complex IT environments.
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate across business, operational, digital, data, and technical teams, ensuring solutions align with IT governance, organisational standards, and GDPR.
• Experience leading stakeholders through significant organisational or digital change, including training, engagement, process redesign, and adoption support.
• Expertise in data extraction, cleansing, transformation, and migration from legacy housing systems into a consolidated, modern HMS (Desirable).
• Formal project management certification, such as PRINCE2 Practitioner (Desirable).
• Broad modular understanding across housing operations, such as Rents, Repairs, Allocations, ASB, Voids, Stock Condition, and Planned Maintenance (Desirable).
• Experience integrating HMS platforms with wider systems, such as document management, customer portals, workflow automation tools, and reporting solutions (e.g., Power BI, Business Objects) (Desirable).

Working Hours: 37hrs / Monday - Friday

Pay: £450.00 per day

Please note this role is within the scope of IR35.