Sarah Thygesen
Project Support / PMO Professional – Defence Programmes
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About
Project Support and Project Management Office (PMO) professional with 5 years' experience supporting complex defence programmes within Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S) and defence industry environments. Experienced in programme governance, board management, stakeholder engagement, events coordination and delivery assurance across multi-disciplinary teams. Strong background working within Programme / PMO environments, supporting senior project and programme leaders to deliver outputs in line with Ministry of Defence MOD governance, reporting and assurance requirements.
Comfortable working in high-security, high-pressure environments, maintaining accurate documentation, tracking risks and milestones, project reporting and engaging with stakeholders across multiple organisations. SC cleared and experienced supporting high-value, high-sensitivity defence projects.
Experience
Consultant - Sagentia Defence - UK
(2001-01 - 2026-06)
Project Support / Project Manager – DE&S, MOD – SALMO Programme - Sagentia Defence
Supported delivery of Salvage & Marine Operations (SALMO) capability within the Ships Domain programme, providing project support across Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) and Remote Operated Vehicles (ROV) delivery teams.
- Supported lead Project Managers and wider delivery team across programme activities
- Maintained RAID logs, action trackers and milestone reporting
- Recorded project history, decisions and changes in line with governance requirements
- Coordinated stakeholder meetings, reviews and reporting updates
- Supported industry engagement competition in accordance with MOD procurement rules
- Managed stakeholder communications and documentation at SECRET classification
- Prepared weekly reporting material for senior stakeholders
- Coordinated responses to Urgent Change Requests (UCR) and Future Change Request (FCR) requests within demanding timelines
PMO / Project Support – DE&S, MOD – MDIS Programme - Sagentia Defence
Provided PMO and governance support to a major MOD capability investigation programme delivering evidence for future defence capability decisions.
- Supported Programme Lead, Deputy Lead and Workstream Leads
- Coordinated Programme Board (1*) and Sponsor Board (2*) meetings
- Prepared and issued board packs in line with communication plan
- Captured and distributed Record of Actions and Decisions (RoADs)
- Maintained programme governance documentation and Terms of Reference
- Custodian of DefenceShare, collaborative information platform
- Maintained stakeholder lists and organisation charts
- Supported major stakeholder events including symposium and distinguished visitors' day
- Managed programme reporting dashboards and information flow
Project Support – DE&S, MOD – Project Marshall - Sagentia Defence
Provided project management support on Project Marshall, a £1.9bn MOD service delivery programme covering multiple UK and overseas sites.
- Supported delivery of programme outputs in line with governance requirements
- Co-ordinated and managed high level decision meetings
- Identified, raised, monitored risks and the impact to the project delivery
- Maintained milestone tracking and reporting
- Managed Data Delivery Packs for nominated sites
- Supported contract and supplier monitoring
- Provided KPI reporting and progress updates
- Extensive stakeholder engagement across MOD and suppliers
- Reporting on project schedule progress and key milestones
- Supported project controls meetings and reporting
P3M Consultant - Sagentia Defence
Provided project controls and PMO support to software and capability delivery teams.
- Supported project planning, reporting and documentation
- Monitored cost, schedule and resource forecasts
- Maintained risk and issue logs
- Supported quality management and audit preparation
- Assisted with project health checks and baseline monitoring
P3M Consultant - Airbus Defence & Space
(2020-02 - 2020-12)
Provided project support during large-scale Windows 10 rollout programme.
- Maintained project schedule and milestone tracking
- Coordinated engineers across multiple sites
- Prepared KPI and performance reports
- Managed customer communications
- Created project support documentation used as internal guidance
Education
APM Project Fundamentals Qualification - Association for Project Management
Member - Association for Project Management
