Senior IT Project Management in Manchester. Engaged Direct.
Senior, certified IT delivery leadership engaged directly on a B2B basis. No recruitment agency markups, no permanent payroll overhead, and proven delivery from day one.
At risk: Uncoordinated delivery, fractured supplier communication, and slipping milestone dates.
Major Change to Live Services, Without the Outage
Documented delivery across national critical infrastructure, regional NHS shared services, and multi-supplier digital transitions.
Hardware and professional services across multiple vendors renewing the core infrastructure behind the UK Smart Meter network.
Facilities consolidated onto unified modern infrastructure across Greater Manchester, supporting 10,000+ clinical and administrative users.
Critical service requests supported on a major multi-provider platform transitioned smoothly to ServiceNow against strict fixed deadlines.
Disaster recovery data centre migration and critical security overhauls executed seamlessly without unplanned business disruption.
Tailored Resourcing for Your Organisation
Select your context below to see how direct engagement delivers immediate commercial and delivery impact.
A Senior Project Manager, Engaged Direct, for as Long as You Need
Skip the 9- to 18-week recruitment lag and perpetual agency placement margins. Engage an accredited senior project director ready to mobilise immediately on a flexible statement of work.
- Available now: No recruitment agency delay, notice periods, or interview loops.
- Commercial clarity: £0 finder's fee, £0 daily margin, and zero employer NI liabilities.
- Live reporting: Real-time Smartsheet or native tooling dashboards with complete milestone visibility.
Saved directly on standard 2026 agency placement fees, plus £6,000 to £12,000 saved annually on daily rate margins.
Your Badge, Our Delivery
Strengthen your delivery bench without taking on permanent operational overhead. Partner with an experienced senior lead who represents your brand with absolute executive composure.
- Flexible engagement models: Subcontract under your SOW, deliver under your brand, or reserve bench capacity.
- Governance excellence: Client-facing, calm under pressure, and rigorous on risk and commercial controls.
- Turnkey compliance: Limited company, fully insured (£1M+ indemnity), SC ready, with onboarding pack on request.
Delivered for Ideagen through a professional services partner, rescuing multi-organisation clinical rollouts.
A Quick Fit Check and a Fast Answer
We work collaboratively with recruitment agencies and talent acquisition teams on outside-IR35 contract roles that demand proven, certified senior delivery leadership.
- Outside IR35 verified: Established UK limited company, clear contract terms, and full business insurances.
- Rapid response SLA: We typically review opportunities and respond within 20 minutes during working hours.
- Zero placement friction: Immediate availability, SC clearance eligible, and references ready.
Fast, direct answers on candidate suitability, day rates, and start availability without recruiter runaround.
Sound Familiar? The Reality of Project Drift
Most technology projects don’t fail for lack of effort. They drift, and every week of drift burns budget, schedule, and executive confidence.
| Common Project Failure Mode | Remediated Outcome with Project Management Manchester |
|---|---|
| “The project has been amber for months, and nobody can pinpoint why.” | A frank diagnostic in week one, transparent root-cause analysis, and a baselined plan the team believes in. |
| “Monthly status reports say a lot of words but tell you almost nothing.” | Live Smartsheet reporting that communicates milestone progress, RAID logs, and executive decisions at a glance. |
| “Suppliers are pointing fingers at each other over integration delays.” | One unified milestone plan, clear commercial ownership, and firm, diplomatic control of all vendor dependencies. |
| “The agency’s candidate shortlist is still several weeks away from interviews.” | An accredited, senior project manager available immediately, with zero notice period to wait out. |
| “Your best engineers are stretched thin between operational duties and projects.” | Delivery handled end-to-end with disciplined rigour, freeing your core staff to focus on their day jobs. |
How We Help You Deliver
Flexible business-to-business engagement structures tailored precisely to your programme's scale, complexity, and operational rhythm.
On-Demand Project Governance
Senior project direction and governance for the exact days you need, flexing seamlessly as your programme demands.
- Ideal when a project needs steering and governance, but not a full-time lead
- Regular steering pack creation, risk audits, and executive stakeholder briefing
- Commitment that scales up or down based on milestone intensity
Embedded Programme Management
A full-time senior project director integrated into your team, personally accountable from mobilisation through hypercare.
- Infrastructure refreshes, data centre moves, and national multi-site rollouts
- ServiceNow, clinical systems, and multi-supplier platform migrations
- End-to-end commercial oversight, supplier challenge, and zero outage transitions
Specialist Smartsheet Consultancy
Dynamic project workspaces, automated intake workflows, and client reporting portals designed around how projects actually run.
- Interactive Gantt schedules with real-time dependency tracking
- Automated update forms and executive multi-project health dashboards
- White-labelled external client portals (proven with Network Rail partner BORG5)
“I have been running critical technical and clinical programmes for many years now and am constantly reminded of the importance to have an excellent Project Manager at the helm… I must say I would re-employ Steve without hesitation.”
Transparent 2026 Commercial Comparison
Evaluate the true financial and operational economics of direct B2B contracting against traditional agency permanent hires and contractor markups based on published 2026 UK technology employment data.
| Evaluation Criteria | Permanent Agency Hire | Agency Contractor | Project Management Manchester |
|---|---|---|---|
| Upfront Recruitment Fee | £9,000 – £15,000 (15%–25%) | £0 upfront | £0 (Direct B2B agreement) |
| Daily / Annual Agency Margin | £0 (included in placement) | £6,000 – £12,000 / yr (10%–20%) | £0 (Zero daily commission) |
| Employer NI & Pension Liability | £8,250 / yr (15% above £5k threshold) | Embedded into agency daily rate | £0 (One limited company invoice) |
| Time to Mobilisation | 9–18 weeks (Interview + notice) | 1–2 weeks (Agency shortlisting) | Available Now (Immediate start) |
| Contractual Structure & IR35 | Employment contract & PAYE payroll | Agency tripartite contracts | Outside IR35 B2B SOW |
| Resource Accountability | Candidate who accepts your offer | Whoever the recruiter puts forward | Steve Hyde Direct (29 yrs exp) |
| Project Offboarding | Permanent salary liability remains | Contract concludes | Clean conclusion, nothing to unwind |
Your First 30 Days, Made Tangible
A structured 4-week onboarding and governance roadmap eliminating ambiguity, restoring control, and aligning suppliers from day one.
Week 1: Listen and Diagnose
Diagnosis under wayFrank conversations with executive sponsors, technical delivery leads, and suppliers alongside an exhaustive audit of current plans, milestone risks, and supplier contracts.
Week 2: Plan and Baseline
Plan baselinedConstruction of a realistic, achievable delivery schedule, a live risk and issue (RAID) register, and a transparent governance rhythm agreed across all delivery partners.
Week 3: Make Progress Visible
On trackDeployment of a live automated dashboard in Smartsheet or your organisation’s existing tooling, updated continuously as work happens rather than in delayed monthly packs.
Week 4: Build Delivery Momentum
On track, reporting liveMulti-vendor alignment to a single integrated plan and the first formal steering board report issued with specific, decisive executive actions requested.
Delivery Case Studies & Scenarios
Real-world delivery turnarounds, complex infrastructure refreshes, and multi-supplier transitions across energy, healthcare, transport, and software sectors.
“The end-of-life date is looming.”
Challenge: Core IT and security platforms behind the UK Smart Meter service required replacement before vendor support ended, alongside a disaster recovery data centre migration without outage.
Action: Steve directed three concurrent projects to fixed dates, managed a £16M hardware and services budget, rigorously challenged supplier SOW costs, and secured extraordinary Energy Industry panel outage approvals.
“The rollout covers hundreds of sites.”
Challenge: Regional NHS shared service operated across fragmented sites, networks, and data centres, restricting clinical mobility and inflating support costs.
Action: Steve established robust infrastructure standards, designed a repeatable time-boxed cutover model, and delivered LAN, Wi-Fi, and WAN transitions across 550 sites while consolidating supplier contracts.
“Nobody can see the whole portfolio.”
Challenge: Design partner for UK rail running high-volume programmes under Network Rail GRIP governance suffered from manual reporting and poor capacity forecasting.
Action: Steve led the portfolio and an offshore team of 8 specialists, architecting a bespoke Smartsheet delivery system with standardised plans, readiness checklists, and client reporting portals.
“Several suppliers must land one change.”
Challenge: Multi-provider service management platform required migration from legacy systems to ServiceNow under severe regulatory deadline pressure.
Action: Steve directed testing and data migration, audited multi-supplier work statements, controlled spend, and orchestrated seamless service transition across all providers.
“A delivery is drifting, and client trust with it.”
Challenge: Multiple councils, public health authorities, and NHS organisations were deploying SaaS applications simultaneously, resulting in mounting stakeholder friction.
Action: Steve engaged client sponsors, restructured real requirements, remobilised delivery teams, and steered complex technical migrations through to customer satisfaction.
“Your workflows need a better system.”
Challenge: US-based management consultancy required end-to-end operational workflow modernisation with Smartsheet at the architectural centre.
Action: Steve served as principal Smartsheet consultant across international time zones, streamlining workflows, automating stakeholder data intake, and coaching teams to maximum capability.
Steve Hyde
29 Years Technology Delivery (14 Years IT & Infrastructure Programme Leadership + 15 Years Hands-on Infrastructure Engineering).
Senior Leadership on Every Engagement
You work directly with Steve Hyde — never junior delegates or agency replacements. Every project benefits from three decades of technical fluency and executive accountability.
Steve bridges the gap between deep infrastructure engineering and board-level commercial governance. With hands-on roots in network architectures, data centres, and cloud platforms, technical teams cannot pull the wool over his eyes, while senior sponsors gain clear, honest commercial oversight.
As a Certified Mediator, Steve brings proven dispute resolution skills when vendor contracts, inter-team politics, or partner delivery tensions threaten project success.
Member of the Sentien Alliance — an invited coalition of senior independent transformation leaders selected on documented enterprise delivery track record.
What Clients & Partners Say
Real, unedited feedback from programme directors, VP executives, and partner recruiters.
Frequently Asked Questions
Upfront details on start speed, IR35 status determinations, insurance coverage, and engagement terms.
Immediately. We are available now, and delivery can begin as soon as scope and commercial terms are agreed. There is no 9- to 18-week hiring cycle and no notice period to wait out.
Any size, large or small. From a focused single-site change or bespoke Smartsheet setup to multi-year national programmes with budgets of up to £16M and rollouts across 550 regional healthcare sites. If it needs to be delivered well, we can help.
Simply. You contract with our UK limited company for a defined service on a business-to-business basis, so there is no employment relationship and nothing to add to your payroll. Engagements are structured to sit outside IR35 from day one. If you are a medium or large organisation, you will complete your standard Status Determination Statement (SDS), and we provide all required evidence and operational boundaries to do so rapidly.
Yes. We deliver under your Statement of Work (SOW), under your brand badge, or on an agreed bench arrangement ready for your next pipeline deal. Precedent engagements include delivering healthcare SaaS rollouts for Ideagen through a professional services partner.
Yes. We are fully insured, including comprehensive Professional Indemnity, Public Liability, and Employers Liability insurance, and are SC ready: eligible for UK Security Check clearance through a sponsoring organisation.
Schedule a Discovery Consultation
The quickest way to find out what your project needs, where the risks lie, and what it would take to deliver. No obligation and no hard sell.
Request a 30-Minute Discovery Call
We'll discuss your project’s status, explore resourcing options, and outline a realistic 30-day plan.
Direct Contact & Office Location
Prefer an immediate conversation? Reach Steve directly via phone, WhatsApp, or email.
Wed: 09:00 – 18:30 (Sat–Sun: Closed)