Project Administrator at Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)

About the job:

The CSIR has a vacancy for a Project Administrator in the Hosted National Programmes: Circular Innovation South Africa. The incumbent will be responsible for providing administrative support according to applicable project management frameworks in support of the effective and efficient delivery of projects. This position is based in Pretoria, but the CSIR will consider hybrid/remote working arrangements with the other CSIR Centres in Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town, and Stellenbosch.

Key responsibilities:

• Support in drafting, routing and follow-up of new agreements, contracts, proposals, etc., ensuring timeous and correct approvals.
• Liaise with the CSIR Strategic Procurement Unit on all procurement requests (publishing of RFQs/RFPs, requesting of Purchase Orders, etc.).
• Assist with the administrative aspects required to establish, implement and maintain project controls
• Facilitate and plan meetings, including booking of venues
• Draft and distribute meeting documentation
• Participate in meetings and capture minutes, actions and resolutions
• Assist with travel bookings for staff members, as required
• Receive and process quarterly reports from funding recipients
• Assist the Manager in preparing quarterly progress reports
• Assist the Manager in receiving and processing technical project deliverables
• Maintain a financial spreadsheet to monitor payments to beneficiaries
• Track project milestones that trigger invoicing and payments 
• Receive project status feedback from stakeholders and record information
• Follow up with CSIR Finances to ensure payments are made timeously
• Quality assurance and control:
• Maintain accurate, neat and effective data sets, documents and records
• Perform continuous quality checks and timeously report anomalies to the Manager
• Assist the Manager to capture project data and documentation into appropriate configuration / document management systems
• Facilitate project documentation and ensure compliance with project management and business frameworks and CSIR quality standards
• Assist the Manager in preparing the Annual Progress Report
• Assist the Manager with administrative tasks for project close out, including preparation of final list of deliverables and evaluation against contract / agreement

Qualifications, skills and experience:

• A National Diploma in project management with at least three years project administration experience within a project/programme management training environment assisting in the coordination of multiple projects.
• Highly competent in using Microsoft software (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
• Attention to detail, accuracy in work is imperative
• Excellence / quality orientation
• Numerical reasoning
• Initiative
• Planning and organising
• Verbal and written communication
• All international qualifications require an evaluation report / certificate issued by the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA).

Closing date: 07 june 2024