Senior Divisional Projects Manager

Founded over 35 years ago, First Quality is a family-owned company that has grown from a small business in McElhattan, Pennsylvania into a group of companies, employing over 5,000 team members, while maintaining our family values and entrepreneurial spirit. With corporate offices in New York and Pennsylvania and 8 manufacturing campuses across the U.S. and Canada, the companies within the First Quality group produce high-quality personal care and household products for large retailers and healthcare organizations. Our personal care and household product portfolio includes baby diapers, wipes, feminine pads, paper towels, bath tissue, adult incontinence products, laundry detergents, fabric finishers, and dishwash solutions. In addition, we manufacture certain raw materials and components used in the manufacturing of these products, including flexible print and packaging solutions.

Guided by our values of humility, unity, and integrity, we leverage advanced technology and innovation to drive growth and create new opportunities. At First Quality, you’ll find a collaborative environment focused on continuous learning, professional development, and our mission to Make Things Better®.

We are seeking a Senior Divisional Projects Manager for our First Quality Tissue SE, LLC location in Anderson, SC that will also support the Tissue Division overall.  This position will ensure effective delivery of major business and capital projects that apply across operating and support functions. Ensure consistency of process, adherence to standards, and delivery of committed results and impacts with a life cycle and value-delivery mindset. Tailor the project methodology approach as the work requires, from initiation through closeout and operational handover.

Primary responsibilities include:

- Ensure projects deliver as committed in quality, cost, schedule, safety, and business value, with specific concentration on defined success measures. Audit and verify project progress and delivery at defined intervals.
- Initiate work by confirming business needs, expected benefits, constraints, and success criteria with sponsors. Develop charters, identify stakeholders across operations, engineering, finance, IT, OEMs, and contractors, and recommend the appropriate project delivery approach.
- Build integrated project execution plans and schedules in coordination with operations and technical leaders. This includes scope of work, WBS, bidding/quoting, requisitions, contracting strategy, construction/installation, commissioning, cutover, training, and adoption as applicable.
- Lead both traditional capital asset projects (facility, equipment, utilities, brownfield modifications, and multi-site asset programs) and business-oriented projects (process improvement, systems implementation, operating-model change, and cross-functional initiatives).
- Interface with the engineering teams, project sponsors/requestors, OEMs, contractors, and business stakeholders to deliver work.
- Execute through matrixed teams: coordinate design packages, procurement, construction or installation, and start-up on capital work; coordinate requirements, process design, system delivery, and change management on business work.
- Monitor and control scope, schedule, cost, quality, risk, issues, and benefits against plan. Apply project controls appropriate to CAPEX (estimates, commitments, forecasts, change orders, earned value or equivalent, and stage-gate reviews).
- Track and deliver project status updates, bringing forward concerns when a project is at risk or off-track. Maintain appropriate user interfaces and governance forums for project visibility, decision logs, and RAID management.
- Support the FQT Engineering Way process for project management and execution, train team members on application of the process, ensure compliance, and adjust as improvements are identified. Apply the same process discipline to business-oriented work so delivery is consistent across project types.
- Manage change control, compliance, safety, quality, regulatory, and internal-control requirements throughout the project life cycle.
- Close projects by obtaining acceptance, completing punch-list or hypercare, closing contracts and financials, transferring ownership and knowledge to operations, capturing lessons learned, and handing off benefits tracking.
- Manage and ensure best possible total life-cycle performance and cost of assets from design to decommissioning, including total cost of ownership after handover.
- Mix of office, plant/site, and remote stakeholder environments at FQT locations as assigned. Regular interface with operations on the floor and with engineering, contractors, and OEMs.
- Provides matrix leadership to project engineers, coordinators, operations partners, and contractor/OEM resources assigned to the project.

The ideal candidate should possess the following:

- Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Business, Construction Management, or a related field, or equivalent experience through relevant functional roles with demonstrated application of project management skills and processes.
- Mid- to senior-level project management experience (typically 7–12+ years) owning multi-workstream projects from concept through closeout.
- Demonstrated results managing complex projects from concept to execution with values of >$1MM, including multi-site or multi-asset work.
- Proven delivery of both engineering/capital projects and business-oriented projects (process, systems, commercial, or organizational change).
- Working knowledge of project controls, capital stage-gate or equivalent governance, and common contracting models (including OEM, contractor, EPC/EPCM, T&M, and fixed-price arrangements).
- Preferred: PMP. Also valued depending on portfolio mix: PRINCE2 Foundation/Practitioner, PMI-ACP, CSM/PSM, or CompTIA Project+. Site or safety credentials are a plus for field-based CAPEX work.
- Travel between Anderson, SC and Lock Haven, PA, and to other sites, vendors, or regional facilities as required. Periods of higher on-site presence during outages, installations, commissioning, cutovers, or go-live. Must be able to work in manufacturing and construction environments, including using required PPE.

Skills Requirements:

- Demonstrated ability to collaborate and build relationships across operations, engineering, finance, IT, vendors, and senior leadership.
- Capable of building, selling, and aligning areas on strategies and a shared project vision.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, including trade-off judgment across scope, cost, time, risk, and value.
- Financial literacy for CAPEX versus OPEX, forecasts, contingency, commitments, and benefits realization.
- Stakeholder management, conflict resolution, and matrix leadership; communicates clearly with leaders, engineers, operators, technicians and contractors.
- Ability to apply predictive methods (charter, baseline, critical path, change control) and Agile/hybrid methods where they fit.
- Ability to read engineering drawings and technical packages at a management level and know when to engage technical SMEs.
- Change-management awareness so process and system changes are adopted after go-live.
- Proficiency with common project management tools (for example MS Project, Primavera, Smartsheet, or equivalent) and standard collaboration tools.

What We Offer You

We believe that by continuously improving the quality of our benefits, we can help to raise the quality of life for our team members and their families. At First Quality you will receive:

- Competitive base salary and bonus opportunities
- Paid time off (three-week minimum)
- Medical, dental and vision starting day one
- 401(k) with employer match
- Paid parental leave
- Child and family care assistance (dependent care FSA with employer match up to $3750)
- Bundle of joy benefit (years’ worth of free diapers to all team members with a new baby)
- Tuition assistance
- Wellness program with savings of up to $4,000 per year on insurance premiums
- ...and more!

First Quality is committed to protecting information under the care of First Quality Enterprises commensurate with leading industry standards and applicable regulations.  As such, First Quality provides at least annual training regarding data privacy and security to employees who, as a result of their role specifications, may come in to contact with sensitive data.

First Quality is an Equal Opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, gender identification, or protected Veteran status.