Director, Center of Excellence

Philadelphia Gas Works

Looking for a challenge to fuel up your future?

Free Health Insurance Options– Free Dental Insurance – Flex Spending - Commuter Benefits - Pension Plan – Free Parking – Wellness Programs – On-site Gyms – Tuition Assistance - PSLF Eligible Employer - Parental Leave

The
Philadelphia Gas Works (PGW)
is the largest municipally owned gas utility in the nation, supplying gas service in the City of Philadelphia to over 500,000 customers. From its humble beginnings in 1836, PGW has grown into the large, modern facility that exists today. As one of the nation's leading natural gas providers, PGW prides itself on stability and continual growth. PGW is dedicated to becoming the Greenest Natural Gas Delivery Company in the region.

Become part of the PGW Team

Location: 800 W Montgomery Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19122

Job is on site 5 days per week.
Eligibility for compressed work week after 6 months

Director, Center of Excellence – Corporate Planning

The Director is directly responsible for providing strategic leadership, direction, and oversight to the enterprise-wide Center of Excellence (CoE) office within PGW's Corporate Planning Department. The Director develops and leads the CoE office's functional responsibilities for deploying and instilling standards, best practices, and capabilities throughout the company driving corporate project, program, and portfolio management; and continuous improvement programming and impacts. This role collaborates across all PGW departments to embed high-impact methodologies, foster cross-functional alignment, and deliver measurable performance improvements that support the organization's strategic goals. The Director will guide team members to: align projects to the strategic plan, define and execute departmental process improvement plans, determine and formulate policies and business strategies, and communicate the status of projects. PGW is passionate about developing clean energy solutions while continuing to meet the energy demands of today and tomorrow

CoE Strategic Leadership

• Leads the development and execution of the CoE vision, strategy, and roadmap aligned with organizational objectives
• Establishes governance frameworks, performance metrics, and operational standards to ensure CoE effectiveness and sustainability.
• Develops and manages a team of specialists in process improvement and project management to deliver high-value initiatives.
• Promotes a culture of knowledge sharing, continuous learning, and best practice standardization
• Partners with department heads and senior leaders to identify enterprise challenges and provide scalable, evidence-based solutions.
• Facilitates change management strategies to ensure the adoption of CoE-driven new processes, tools, and practices.
• Leads enterprise-wide workshops, training sessions, and capability-building programs.
• Defines KPIs and success criteria for CoE initiatives, ensuring delivery of measurable business outcomes.
• Conduct regular reviews of CoE impact, reporting progress to executive leadership and recommending adjustments.
• Launch internal training programs, capability assessments, and knowledge-sharing initiatives that elevate organizational excellence.
• Networks and collaborates with industry contacts to identify, evaluate, and deploy internally new best practices and technologies to support execution of CoE responsibilities.
• Cultivate a culture of continuous improvement and innovation across business units.
• Communicate the value of the CoE to internal and external stakeholders, as needed.

Project, Program, and Portfolio Management

• Defines, maintains, and ensures compliance with standards for enterprise-wide project, program, and portfolio management; oversees administration of corporate project, program, and portfolio management tools and systems, including scope statement creation, schedule management, risk identification, marshaling resources (internal and external), obtaining buy-in, and driving projects to successful completion with aggressive schedules.
• Strives to standardize and introduce economies of repetition in the execution of projects and cross-department programs.
• Helps direct monitoring of key program and projects throughout PGW through excellence in communication, governance, reporting, and reinforcing standards; maintains consolidated dashboard for corporate projects with metrics and tracking; facilitates alignment and aggregation of the project status reports and consolidates into dashboard for communication with Senior Team; Coordinates and consolidates plan data into management information and specified report formats
• Develops and communicates key elements of PGW's Project, Program, and Portfolio Management strategic vision and execution to the organization.
• Identify and establish relationships with various stakeholders and/or other organizations that impact PGW's project management.
• Ensure alignment with a top-down enterprise-wide approach and gain alignment

Continuous Improvement

• Develops corporate continuous improvement program for: Identifying, evaluating, selecting, and facilitating the execution of performance improvement and process optimization opportunities
  to reduce costs, achieve efficiencies, and/or improve quality
• Organizing and promoting enterprise-wide improvement efforts by evaluating and developing improved operating procedures and performance measures that assist PGW functional leaders in improving business processes, increasing availability of data for decision-making and enhancing the reliability of financial reporting.
• Supports the development of new policies and procedures, in alignment with performance improvement and process optimization initiatives
• Coordinating the activities of teams as they relate to performance improvement and process optimization initiatives.
• Networking and collaborating with industry contacts to evaluate best practices and make recommendations for performance improvement and process optimization while retaining safety and reliability at an acceptable risk levels;
• Develop and lead a continuous improvement strategy roadmap with a 3–5-year timeframe.
• Influence and advise others through technical expertise and effective stakeholder collaboration to ensure alignment and buy-in for strategic continuous improvement initiatives.
• Demonstrate a high level of cultural leadership (Safety in every step, Personal accountability, One team, Active learning).

Personnel Management

• Assesses subordinate needs, monitors performance, sets goals, evaluates and disciplines ensuring subordinates are well equipped to meet and/or exceed job expectations.

Finance & Accounting

• Develops the operating and capital budgets for assigned unit and helps prepare final budget recommendations with variance explanations and metrics for submission to Finance and Executive Staff.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Business Management, Organizational Development, Engineering, or other related area of study
• Advanced degree (Master's), Project Management (PMI/PMP) certification, Six Sigma Black Belt, and Prosci Change Management certification preferred
• 7 – 10 years experience related experience overseeing enterprise portfolio management and continuous improvement offices; specific energy utility environment experience performing as a project manager in two or more of the following substantive subject matter areas:Finance/Budget, Rates, Operations, Information Technology, Customer Affairs, Internal Communications and/or metrics/statistical analysis is preferred.
• Must be a skilled, experienced leader with ability to establish and maintain a high level of customer trust and confidence, build a quality team-oriented customer focused professional staff in tune with the client's business needs, lead the entire range of problem-solving work from problem definition to analysis, recommendation, and the development of implementation plans.
• Must be able to motivate teams and to work in an environment that requires flexibility and adaptability.
• Must have the ability to understand the business environment, business cycle, internal processes, projects, and programs that support initiatives, the "big picture" and long-term implications, as well as the short-term impacts and challenges and how to achieve the strategy through tactical execution and leadership.
• Must have interpersonal influential skills with the ability to initiate a sense of change throughout the business; encourage the organization to embrace change, and provide guidance to cross-functional and cross-departmental projects.
• Must have the ability to interact effectively with all levels of management and across department lines, prepare/deliver formal and informal presentations, correspond internally and externally for all levels of staff, vendors, end-users, etc., is essential.
• Must have strong analytical skills with the ability to conduct research, gather relevant internal and external information and synthesize into a cohesive, concise presentation and/or analysis.
• Advanced skill sets in Microsoft Office and Microsoft Project, SharePoint, Visio; and accounting software such as Oracle.

We offer a strong benefit package that includes free basic health and dental insurance. PGW is proud to be an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer, M/F/D/VAAP/EEO.

Location: 800 W Montgomery Ave, Philadelphia, PA19122

While we appreciate all responses, only those who are uniquely qualified will be contacted. Local candidates will be given preference – interview expenses are not funded

.