Planning Engineer - Assistant Manager- Abu Dhabi

About the Role

Our client is an established manufacturer of engineered ystems, serving district energy, oil and gas, and industrial projects across the region.
The Planning Engineer – Assistant Manager owns the planning and scheduling of projects and production, so that orders are delivered on time, on budget and to specification. The role links sales, engineering, procurement, production and logistics, and gives management a clear, reliable view of progress, risks and capacity.

Key Responsibilities

Planning and scheduling

• Build and maintain detailed baseline schedules for projects, from contract award through design, procurement, manufacturing, delivery and site support.
• Translate project schedules into production and resource plans, aligned with factory capacity and material availability.
• Define work breakdown structures, critical paths, milestones and interfaces with clients and subcontractors.
• Prepare schedules that meet client and consultant contractual requirements, including submission formats.

Monitoring and project controls

• Track actual progress against baseline and report variances, delays and recovery actions.
• Issue weekly and monthly progress reports, S-curves and look-ahead schedules for management and clients.
• Identify schedule risks early and propose mitigation and recovery plans.
• Support delay analysis, extension-of-time submissions and variation impact assessments.
• Contribute to cost tracking, forecasting and earned-value reporting where required.

Coordination

• Work with sales and estimation on delivery timelines for tenders and proposals.
• Coordinate with engineering, procurement, production, QA/QC and logistics so plans reflect real constraints.
• Attend project, production and client progress meetings, and keep action items moving.

Leadership and improvement

• Guide and review the work of junior planners or planning engineers.
• Standardise planning templates, procedures and reporting formats.
• Drive improvements in on-time delivery, capacity use and planning accuracy.

Requirements

Area	Essential	Preferred
Education	Bachelor's degree in Mechanical, Civil, Industrial or Production Engineering	PMP, PMI-SP or equivalent planning certification
Experience	8+ years in planning or project controls, including 2+ years in a senior or lead planner role	Pre-insulated piping, district cooling, pipelines, oil and gas, or engineered-product manufacturing
Project type	Planning for EPC, manufacturing or fabrication projects	Combined project and production (factory) planning
Tools	Primavera P6 and MS Project; advanced Excel	SAP or Oracle ERP planning modules; Power BI
Region	Experience on projects in the GCC	Familiarity with client and consultant requirements in the UAE and Saudi Arabia
Language	Fluent English, written and spoken	Arabic

Core competencies

• Strong analytical skills, with a structured approach to critical path and resource analysis.
• Clear communicator, able to present progress and risks to senior management and clients.
• Comfortable coordinating across departments and holding teams to agreed dates.
• High attention to detail and ownership of schedule accuracy.

Package

A competitive package will be discussed with shortlisted candidates. It is expected to follow the usual GCC structure: basic salary, housing and transport allowances, medical insurance, annual air ticket, visa, and end-of-service benefits.