WHAT DOES A PROJECT LEADER DO?

Published: Dec 25, 2025 - The Project Leader plans, coordinates, and delivers projects from concept through implementation to achieve scope, schedule, cost, and quality targets. This role leads cross-functional teams and manages stakeholders, risks, resources, and change control to ensure smooth execution and timely decisions. The leader monitors progress through clear reporting and governance, drives continuous improvement, and ensures compliance with internal standards and customer requirements.

A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Project Leader

1. Project Leader Duties

  • Project Planning: Planning, managing and controlling the project to the business case and requirements for the product
  • Benefits Delivery: Ensuring that the project delivers the key benefits based on time-critical milestones and delivers all appropriate project outputs
  • Governance Control: Provide project governance to ensure a project runs on time, on budget and meets quality and success criteria using measurable objectives and KPIs
  • Risk Management: Owning and managing project risks, identifying and controlling both problems and opportunities by applying appropriate mitigations and monitoring and planning accordingly
  • Stakeholder Advising: Advising the business and senior stakeholders on project risks and recommended responses to threats and opportunities
  • Quality Standards: Ensure project teams deliver to the required standard in a timely fashion and act as an exemplar for the behavioural standards of Ocado Technology and Ocado as a whole
  • Priority Alignment: Work with the Product and cross-functional Engineering teams to define, agree and communicate risks and issues as well as strategic and tactical priorities within the project and to stakeholders
  • Open Communication: Promote and maintain proactive open communication between the project and other teams and stakeholders
  • Technical Communication: Communicate technical topics effectively to technical and non-technical stakeholders up to board level
  • Project Reporting: Communicate relevant information about the project widely, concisely and accurately to assure customers, stakeholders and delivery teams
  • Vision Tracking: Work with the product managers to understand the strategic vision of the product to proactively track and resolve project-critical tasks
  • Relationship Building: Build collaborative relationships with all stakeholders and team members to successfully manage project lifecycles
  • Launch Support: Managing the launch and go-live support teams and arrangements to allow the product to successfully enter into the operational environment at project closure
  • Requirements Translation: Taking product business requirements and being able to turn these into technical requirements
  • Resource Planning: Taking specifications and planning out the activities and the resources required to ensure these criteria are achieved in the final product

2. Project Leader Details

  • Contract Planning: Review, draft and agree on the contract programme and the mode and method of construction
  • Design Management: Assist in the management of design consultants to ensure information is provided to suit the procurement strategy and that the production of working drawings is completed within given timeframes, working to deliver a cohesive design and cost programme
  • Design Improvement: Add value to the design process by challenging solutions, methods and techniques, to improve build ability, develop repeatability and reduce whole life costs
  • Site Coordination: Manage the interface between the development and build functions and work with the onsite build team and trade contractors in the production of working drawings, procurement, and prefabrication and performance on site
  • Budget Compliance: Ensure all design solutions offered by designers and subcontractors fully comply with the project documentation and budget strategy
  • Commercial Control: Implement correct commercial control of the build contract and the contractors, within pre-set budgets
  • Claims Handling: Ensure that contractual and claim correspondence is suitably actioned within agreed timeframes
  • Safety Compliance: Ensure that all works are carried out in a planned, controlled and safe manner in accordance with statutory regulations, current standards and company health, safety, environmental and quality standards

3. Project Leader Responsibilities

  • Project Planning: Develop and ensure effective project plans are in place and operational for each project and work proactively with other team members to set priorities in accordance with applicable project plans, company SOPs, ICH GCP guidelines and regulatory requirements
  • Trial Operations: Proactively manage project-level operational aspects including management of trial timeline, budget, resources and vendors
  • Stakeholder Updates: Provide efficient updates on trial progress to project stakeholders with respect to vendor selection, project plans, trial budget and timeline management, quality standards and risk mitigation
  • Vendor Quality: Monitor the quality of vendor deliverables, address quality issues with the appropriate team member and identify opportunities to improve training, execution and quality control across the clinical team
  • Vendor Negotiation: Participate in vendor selection and negotiations
  • Team Support: Effectively manage and provide support to the project associate and other team members
  • Team Communication: Communicate effectively with all team members and project stakeholders
  • Visit Planning: Work with Project assistants to lay out visit timelines, windows, material requirements, and logistical plans
  • Patient Scheduling: Communicating with patient HEROs and Project Assistants to ensure visits and supplies are being scheduled according to required timelines
  • Vendor Coordination: Coordinate/Communicate with Hawthorne Effect colleagues, the institution's research team third-party vendors for any visit needs contacting patients, test orders, etc.

4. Project Leader Accountabilities

  • Admin Support: Provide administrative and technical support to HEROs (clinical support will be handled by the clinical team)
  • Document Control: Receive, file, and upload all study-related documents and files
  • Clinical Coordination: Work with the clinical team to ensure all documents and assessments are reviewed, uploaded, and released promptly
  • Procedure Updates: Regularly review and update the quality manual and procedures
  • Invoice Tracking: Track payments and client invoicing for each assigned study
  • Confidentiality Compliance: Maintain patient confidentiality at all times
  • Professional Representation: Represent the organization positively and professionally at all times
  • Mission Communication: Communicate the mission, ethics, and goals of the organization
  • Quality Improvement: Participate in performance improvement and continuous quality improvement activities
  • Meeting Participation: Attend regular staff meetings

5. Project Leader Functions

  • Project Leadership: Lead business projects to a successful conclusion or a quick, effective kill by demonstrating best practices in leadership skills
  • Strategy Alignment: Define Projects to fit with the business strategy through understanding the root of the problem and customer requirements relative to products
  • Method Development: Know and apply existing standard methods and develop new ones
  • Decision Support: Develop complex and scientific information into information that allows the business to make decisions
  • Knowledge Capture: Make a significant contribution to capturing the knowledge of how and why products and systems perform in the way they do
  • Loss Elimination: Identify losses and use modern experimental design approaches to eliminate them

6. Project Leader Overview

  • Process Standardization: Partner with stakeholders and leaders to identify opportunities to standardize, simplify and scale processes for sustained productivity gains and positive impact on client experience
  • Continuous Improvement: Drive a continuous business improvement philosophy by ensuring appropriate use of methodology (Lean Six Sigma, Agile, etc.), process discipline, fact-based conclusions, and involvement of associates in problem solving and decision making
  • Barrier Removal: Works closely with business process owners, Operations leaders, and project champions to help remove barriers and provide insights and innovative solutions to problems
  • Requirements Translation: Understanding the business process and business requirements of the customers and translating them to functional specifications or user stories
  • Automation Delivery: Partner closely with the divisional Risk team and Process Automation team to deliver more automated, resilient, and well-controlled processes
  • Strategy Support: Assist the Business Process Department Leader in developing a strategy to enable the continuous improvement of the digital operation experience using process improvement methodologies, automation, and data
  • Statistical Modeling: Design, execute and interpret advanced statistical tests or simulation models
  • Complex Problem Solving: Solve difficult problems in gray areas where little or no guidance is available, considering both the upstream and downstream impacts to various departments
  • Policy Interpretation: Interpret regulations, internal policies, procedures, and guidelines to solve problems and implement solutions

7. Senior Project Leader Details and Accountabilities

  • Global Delivery: Leading global cross-functional project team delivery, accountable for the achievement of milestones and quality of contracted scope
  • Customer Contact: Serving as the primary contact with the customer for progress and governance
  • Study Planning: Developing study management plans and ensuring consistent use of study tools
  • Process Compliance: Training materials and compliance with standard processes, policies and procedures
  • Risk Mitigation: Anticipating risk and implementing mitigation strategies
  • Team Assignment: Managing study team assignments, accountability and resource requirements
  • Budget Control: Ensuring the study budget is managed proactively including scope changes and that financial systems are accurate

8. Project Leader Tasks

  • Process Development: Work closely with EXE project teams, developing processes and WoW to support the first-time install of a system at a customer site
  • Facility Readiness: Partner with customer and internal stakeholders to ensure facility requirements are met and in place before system arrival
  • Safety Protocols: Define and maintain safety protocols and standard operating procedures during Installations and have this reviewed by line management
  • Milestone Planning: Provide project planning with pre-defined milestones to the Project manager
  • Activity Coordination: Convey key milestones to team members (ASML and 3rd party) and coordinate activities to achieve on-time completion
  • Customer Updates: Interface with customers, providing installation updates, escalation management, and coordinating customer-related activities with the project team
  • Technical Communication: Effectively communicate complex installation and technical details to customers
  • Escalation Process: Ensure the agreed escalation process is executed
  • Escalation Leadership: Take the lead in escalations that are beyond the control of coordinators and team leads, and implement methods and actions that prevent them from recurring
  • Issue Follow-up: Ensure that follow-up actions on reported issues are on track by partnering with factory-assigned coordinator(s)
  • Lessons Learned: Provide feedback during and at the end of the installation that will enhance future installations, taking costs and cycle time into account
  • Safety Coaching: Coach the team members in maintaining a safe work environment
  • Execution Reviews: Review the execution phase with the team members regularly
  • Post Project Report: Prepare a post-project summary for management, highlighting performance against key performance metrics associated with the project

9. Project Leader Roles

  • Team Leadership: Lead a multi-disciplined development team of ~10 engineers to ensure in-spec, on-time delivery
  • Deliverable Definition: Define deliverables for mechanical, electrical, software, mechatronic, and industrial engineers
  • Project Planning: Create detailed project plans including scheduling, resource, and material requirements
  • Task Delegation: Delegate tasks and maintain accountability of team members
  • Status Communication: Communicate upward and downward regularly
  • Cross-Sector Alignment: Align with cross-sectors regularly to ensure on-time delivery
  • Resource Securing: Engage with Group Leaders to secure necessary resources
  • Issue Escalation: Escalate blocking issues for the team through the proper paths
  • Dependency Management: Manage system interdependencies and the impact of changes on the own module and the whole machine
  • Impact Assessment: Develop impact statements due to resource reallocation and scope changes
  • Risk Assessment: Assess and address technical and operational risks based on the input of architects and design engineers
  • Supplier Coordination: Coordinate external suppliers and developers involved in product design

10. Project Leader Additional Details

  • Project Planning: Develop and maintain a formal project plan with all key milestones, budgets, and resources assigned to specific tasks and outcomes
  • Risk Management: Perform Initial And Ongoing Risk Management
  • Contingency Planning: Identify potential project risks and implement contingency plans, mitigate actual risks with team members and keep the client informed about risks and contingencies
  • Quality Assurance: Manage and ensure first-time quality on the project deliverables
  • Quality Standards: Establish quality standards for the project that drive individual and team commitment to quality
  • Client Management: Develop And Manage The Client Relationship
  • Client Ownership: Owns the client relationship at a study level and is responsible for client communication, ensuring high client satisfaction
  • P&L Management: Understand And Own The Project P&L
  • Budget Forecasting: Manage the project according to budget with revenue recognition and forecasting, including resource management, pass-through management (review, regular reconciliation and forecasting)
  • Team Leadership: Manage The Cross-functional Project Team
  • Stakeholder Enablement: Enable all stakeholders to achieve successful study completion while maintaining high client satisfaction
  • Leadership Representation: Represent Project Leadership Function in external client meetings and presentations such as Bid Pursuit Meetings, Investigator Meetings or others
Relevant Information
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What Does A Project Do?
What Does A Project Coordinator Do?
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