Capacity Planning Manager

i2G Systems•Plymouth, MI

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Capacity Planning Manager builds and maintains i2G's labor demand forecast, reconciles it continuously against contract signings and actual hiring, determines the right mix of skill levels and capabilities to meet project and market requirements, owns the trade school and apprenticeship partnerships that feed that supply, and partners with the Talent Account Management Manager to convert that forecast into a prioritized, resourced hiring plan. This is an operations planning role with a heavy analytical core and a strategic remit. It is not a recruiting role and it does not own hiring delivery. It owns the demand signal, its accuracy, the capability architecture behind it, and the external partnerships that build long-term supply.

Requirements

Five or more years in workforce planning, resource planning, operations planning, or financial planning and analysis within a labor-driven services business. Relevant sectors include field services, systems integration, construction and specialty trades, engineering services, staffing, or contact center workforce management.
Demonstrated experience converting a project or sales backlog into a labor forecast, and holding that forecast against changing commercial reality.
Strong quantitative modeling capability. Advanced Excel required, including scenario modeling and large data sets.
Experience partnering across operations leadership and talent acquisition, with the credibility to challenge both.
A track record of holding forecast discipline with stakeholders who are reluctant to commit to dates.
Clear written and verbal communication.
Experience in low-voltage, electronic security, fire, life safety, or building systems.
Familiarity with project accounting and percentage-of-completion revenue recognition.
Exposure to state and local licensing or registration requirements in the field trades.
Experience building or managing trade school, technical college or apprenticeship partnerships, including influencing curriculum and measuring program output.
Proficiency with Power BI, Tableau or a comparable visualization tool.
Bachelor's degree in business, operations, supply chain, industrial engineering, finance, analytics or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
Analytical rigor with a bias toward decision.
Influence without authority. Most of this role's leverage comes from credibility rather than reporting lines.
Comfort operating with incomplete data, and the judgment to know when an estimate is good enough to act on.
Directness
Systems thinking.

Responsibilities

Maintain a rolling 36 month labor demand forecast built from the approved budget, the signed contract backlog and the weighted sales pipeline.
Convert each award into a staffing requirement: role, grade or skill level, quantity, location and need-by date.
Track contract signature status against forecasted starts. Adjust need-by dates as contracts sign, slip or cancel, and communicate each change within an agreed service level.
Distinguish growth demand from attrition backfill and maintain a separate view of each.
Own the requisition hold list: what is on hold, why, who owns the release, and the expected release date.
Reconcile budgeted headcount against actual headcount monthly, and explain the variance in business terms rather than in spreadsheet terms.
Track hires against plan by month, role family and market, and report the trend.
Measure and publish forecast accuracy, and improve it quarter over quarter.
Quantify the revenue and margin consequence of a staffing shortfall so trade-offs are visible when priorities compete.
Determine the right mix of skill levels for each market and project profile, balancing cost, ramp time, certification requirements and availability.
Contribute to i2G’s technician mix strategy: recommend the balance of apprentice, installer, service and senior grades the business should carry, and how that balance should shift as the mix of work, geography and technology changes.
Partner with operations and learning and development to build and maintain the technician skills matrix. Define the capabilities that distinguish each grade, and keep the matrix current as platforms, products and codes change.
Express demand in capabilities rather than headcount, so the plan states which skills are needed where and by when, not simply how many people.
Use the skills matrix to identify capability gaps ahead of demand, and recommend whether each gap is closed through training, internal progression or external hire.
Model build versus buy: internal progression and certification against external hire at a higher grade.
Model adjacent-trade and apprentice sourcing against experienced hire, including the training burden each carries.
Own i2G’s trade school, technical college and apprenticeship partnerships: partner selection, relationship health, program cadence and the pipeline each is expected to produce.
Shape partner curriculum so graduates arrive with the capabilities i2G actually deploys. Align coursework, lab equipment, platform exposure and certification pathways to the technician skills matrix.
Forecast school program output against the 36 month plan, and treat that supply as a planned input to the hiring forecast rather than an opportunistic one.
Measure each partnership on hires produced, retention and time to productive, and reallocate effort toward the relationships that perform.
Plan on productive capacity rather than headcount. Account for time to badge, license, certify and deploy, and for the ramp curve of a new hire.
Identify licensing, registration and jurisdictional requirements that gate deployment in a target market, and surface them before entry rather than after.
Recommend when to deploy surge levers: travel or launch crews, contract labor, subcontractors or agency support.
Act as the single prioritization point between operations and the Talent Account Management Manager.
Publish a rolling 90-day requisition forecast with an agreed priority order, refreshed monthly, set against the 36 month horizon so near-term hiring and long-range capability building stay connected.
Own the monthly talent acquisition and operations review: agenda, data, decisions and follow-through.
Partner on scenario planning when a large award, a market entry or an attrition shift changes the demand picture.
Build and maintain scenarios for new market entry, large awards, acquisition integration and changes in attrition.
Provide leadership with the staffing implications of commercial decisions before those decisions are made, not after.
Stress-test the plan: what happens if attrition rises, if a market opens late, or if a key contract signs early.
Own the capacity model as a single source of truth, with version control and a documented assumptions log.
Partner with finance to keep labor cost, loading and ramp assumptions current.
Define, publish and maintain the planning metrics the business runs on.