The allocation manager’s responsibility is to ensure for the smooth and effective allocation of project management and engineering team members to both client and internal projects, balancing the conflicting requirements of resources and workload from the client services, project management, and growth teams with appropriate team members available.
The Allocation Manager is the first point of contact for anyone who requires an Engineer or Project Manager on a project from the first stages of project estimation and pitching to allocating the specific team members required to deliver the project. The role includes working with Sales & Accounts Managers, Project Managers, and members of the Engineering Team to identify projects’ current resourcing needs and properly allocate Engineers and PMs. They should have an ongoing awareness of who is coming up for rotation and who has leave scheduled. Gaps in resource requirements should be highlighted and addressed in advance. Allocation Managers should be able to deal with any ad hoc requests, knowing when to allocate new resources and when other solutions are more suitable.
Working with Engineers and PMs to ensure that they are briefed on the project to which they are allocated and have any resources they need for onboarding. Maintaining an ongoing awareness of upcoming leave and ensure that team members are properly communicating their time off. Working with Engineers and Project Managers to ensure their ongoing satisfaction with projects, including maintaining an awareness of their learning goals, their work preferences, and their project experience, and attempt to allocate them in a way that meets their personal goals.
Allocations Managers are responsible for the allocations process, ensuring that it is smooth and meets the needs of the client services team. Documenting that process, making adjustments as necessary and communicating any changes to the team. As a key member of the Client Services team, you should work closely with team members to ensure the smooth running of all projects, maintaining an ongoing awareness of competing needs and balancing priorities to achieve company goals.
Skills
- Excellent interpersonal skills, with the ability to deal with all people at all levels and care for their welfare
- Be able to manage your own priorities and the competing priorities of the rest of the company
- Be flexible in your approach, able to deal with ad hoc and unexpected requests
- In-depth knowledge of client services work and project management methodologies
- Thorough attention to detail and able to navigate between high level processes and day-to-day details
- Good organisational skills
- Able to define and oversee processes that are fit-for-purpose
- Be able to communicate across cultures and display good people skills
Responsibilities
- Manage the allocation schedule using appropriate agency tools across departments on a daily basis.
- Work closely with the head of allocations to discuss and suggest solutions to allocation issues, raise hiring needs, freelancer needs, and people issues.
- Sync up on regional project information with the head of allocation
- Work with the Engineering, Project Management, and Sales & Accounts Teams to ensure that all projects are properly allocated
- Deal with ad hoc allocation requests
- Support the definition, documentation and communications of the allocations processes and related issues
- Identify areas where freelancers are required, recommend external support and get in touch with freelancers/agencies from our network to book them to work alongside our teams
- Document and update the skillsets database for Human Made’s engineering, project management, and infrastructure teams
- Monitor and manage available capacity to ensure 100% time tracking of billable time
- Participate in Client Services calls
- Facilitate the Allocation sync calls
- Organise and facilitate discussions to help the allocation process for an upcoming project
- Organise handover discussions with an upcoming allocation team for a final run through allocation, responsibilities, and handover to the project manager.
- Update tools relevant to the allocation process
Detailed responsibilities:
- Prepare the weekly allocation notepad for the sync calls
- Participate in the business planning calls
- Participate in the Revenue planning calls
- Participate in Pipeline calls to answer capacity related questions and communicate upcoming sales engineering allocation
- Participate in the Platform Development call to communicate upcoming Altis allocations
- Participate in Hiring calls to address allocation issues
- Work on on-time pipeline project allocation planning
- Sync Bob and Forecast and outline discrepancies (or other tools)
- Identify any gaps in Forecast and work with the head of allocation to resolve them
- Liaise with the Marketing and Business Development teams to identify engineering / PM allocation needs for internal projects
- Check timesheets are completed for projects that don’t have a project manager
- Connect account management, project management, and business development opportunities
- Run weekly allocation sync calls, post detailed notes, update allocation issues, and communicate outcomes of different conversations in the relevant issues to ensure maximum clarity
Reports to: Head of Allocations
Works with: Head of Allocations, Engineering Team, Client Services Team, Growth Team, Operations Team