Project Manager

Job Description

Job DescriptionSalary:

STRM Recruiting is partnering with a global pharmaceutical leader on a historic $13+ billion investment to build a cutting-edge manufacturing and research hub in the LEAP Innovation District in Lebanon, Indiana. The project includes a $4.5 billion advanced medicine foundry designed to accelerate the production of life-saving treatments for diabetes, cancer, and other serious diseases.

Project Manager

About the Role

The Project Manager provides governance oversight and decision authority and serves as the primary interface with the General Contractor.

This role leads through authority, prioritization, and decision clarity. The PM does not act as a discipline SME, system engineer, or construction manager. Technical authority resides with System Owners.

Execution authority (means, methods, sequencing, manpower deployment) resides with the General Contractor.

This is a site-based role reporting to the Project Director. The role ensures timely decisions, approved change control, accurate cost and schedule performance, and that the contractor has the necessary inputs and support to deliver the project safely, on time, and within budget.

Key Accountabilities

• Serving as the primary day-to-day governance interface for the General Contractor, maintaining regular face-to-face engagement, being accessible, responsive, decisive, and proactively determining disposition and escalation pathways for issues / queries to maintain project progress.
• Ensuring that the project is delivered safely and in full compliance with Client and external Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS) requirements.
• Providing effective management by setting and communicating clear project expectations to the project team on scope, design, schedule, costs, and project change management.
• Maintaining daily visibility of project activities to validate priorities, commitments, readiness, and risk exposure. Identifies sequencing impacts, resource constraints, and emerging risks and escalates through appropriate governance channels.
  (The PM does not own field sequencing or manpower deployment.)
• Serving as the primary Lilly governance, prioritization, and escalation interface to the General Contractor.

Responsibilities

• Maintains structured and transparent engagement with the General Contractor to support governance decisions and issue disposition.
• Understands and works in full compliance with all Client Project Management processes.
• Provides decisive and accountable management, setting and communicating clear expectations to the project team regarding scope, design intent, schedule, cost, and change management.
• Effectively manages project change requests by assessing impact on scope, budget, and schedule and communicates the outcome to the change requester and General Contractor.
  • Technical disposition remains with the System Owner.
    Execution impacts remain with the General Contractor.
    Final approval authority resides with the PM within delegated governance thresholds.
• Effectively manages Project Deviation Notices (PDNs) with the General Contractor and coordinates approval when a PDN is raised.
• Delivers the project on schedule, within budget, and to the approved scope and quality standards through effective governance, prioritization, and escalation.
• Monitors approved contracts, and where issues arise, collaborates with procurement and General Contractor to identify and implement corrections to improve performance.
• Reinforces and ensures adherence to approved safety programs led by the EHS function. Create a culture of safety within the team, and where safety issues arise, ensure timely resolution through appropriate responsible functions.
• Maintains disciplined governance of project risks, costs, and schedule performance, ensuring corrective actions are defined, assigned, and executed by the responsible party, and escalated where required.
• Provides accurate and timely reporting of project performance, progress, risks, and cost status to senior leadership and stakeholders. Issues monthly progress and cost reports.
• Drives continuous improvement and innovation, identifying lessons learned and best practices to enhance project performance and organizational capability.
• Chairs weekly project team meetings and holds project team members accountable for project delivery, preparing focused meeting agendas with attendees to enable effective decision-making.
• Attends project steering meetings, presenting status, schedule, risks, and lookaheads for the specific project scope.
• Maintains daily governance visibility to ensure contractor commitments, priorities, and escalation pathways are clear and aligned with approved scope and schedule.
• In responding to escalations from Construction, System Owners, or C&Q, the PM determines disposition and escalation path. Execution of corrective actions remains the responsibility of the Contractor.

The Project Manager Shall Not

• Direct contractor superintendents, foremen, or craft labor
• Re-sequence field work or assign manpower
• Issue instructions directly to contractor discipline supervisors
• Commit contractor to cost or schedule impacts

Qualifications

• Bachelors degree in Engineering, Construction Management, Project Management, or a related technical discipline (Masters degree preferred).
• Minimum of 10 years experience delivering large-scale pharmaceutical, biotechnology, or life sciences capital projects valued between $500 million and $2 billion, ideally within a greenfield environment.
• Proven experience managing EPC or General Contractors on complex, highly regulated construction projects.
• Demonstrated end-to-end project delivery capability across design, construction, commissioning, and handover phases.
• Strong understanding of pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities, GMP requirements, and regulated environments.
• Expertise in project management governance, including schedule control, cost management, risk management, change control, contract administration, and procurement strategy.
• Highly effective leader and communicator, with strong negotiation and conflict resolution skills and the ability to operate decisively in fast-paced, high-pressure project environments.