Senior Project Consultant
by Cognizant in Aerospace & Aviation
The Senior Project Consultant (Aviation) provides strategic advisory and leadership support to establish, enhance, and govern enterprise project management frameworks within aviation and regulated environments. The role focuses on enterprise PMO setup, PMO transformation, governance optimization, portfolio oversight, and organizational project maturity improvement, ensuring alignment between corporate strategy, portfolio execution, and measurable business outcomes. The consultant designs and transforms centralized, decentralized, or hybrid PMO structures, develops and implements project governance frameworks, policies, standards, and procedures, and defines portfolio prioritization models aligned with strategic objectives. Responsibilities include establishing stage-gate processes, approval mechanisms, and project assurance and quality control frameworks to strengthen governance and accountability. The role oversees portfolio management activities such as portfolio planning, resource allocation, and capacity management, implements enterprise-wide reporting dashboards and KPI frameworks, conducts portfolio health assessments, and delivers executive performance reviews with ROI analysis and CAPEX/OPEX management insights. The consultant establishes enterprise risk management practices, ensures compliance with regulatory and contractual requirements, and leads independent project audits and health checks. Acting as a trusted advisor to C-level executives and steering committees, the role facilitates executive workshops, strategic planning sessions, and decision forums, and serves as escalation point for complex, high-risk initiatives. Additionally, the consultant leads organizational capability development by defining competency frameworks, conducting maturity assessments using P3M3 or similar frameworks, delivering executive-level training, and driving continuous improvement and digital PMO transformation initiatives using enterprise tools such as MS Project Online, Power BI, Clarity, and Jira Align.