Senior Project and Change Manager, ERP/WMS

Location : 10 Carlson Court ( Hybrid)

Employment Type : 24 month Contract

The Opportunity

Gay Lea Foods is seeking an experienced Senior Project and Change Manager to lead the delivery and organizational adoption of DairyLink, a major enterprise transformation implementing a common Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP and Warehouse Management System (WMS) platform.

This is a Gay Lea Foods-side role providing independent project and change leadership across Gay Lea Foods, Alithya as the implementation partner, and other third parties. The Project and Change Manager will own the integrated delivery and change framework, provide clear visibility to leadership, and ensure strong governance, accountability, execution discipline, business readiness, and sustained adoption throughout the program.

The successful candidate will bring significant experience leading large-scale ERP implementations and enterprise change, ideally Microsoft Dynamics 365, with WMS implementation and manufacturing or plant change experience strongly preferred.

Key Responsibilities

Program Delivery & Governance

• Own and maintain the integrated master plan, including milestones, critical path, dependencies, resources, deliverables, change activities, and business-readiness milestones.
• Establish disciplined governance, stage gates, decision rights, escalation processes, and integrated project and change management routines.
• Provide concise, transparent reporting to the Project Sponsor and Steering Committee on delivery health, organizational readiness, adoption risks, and change impacts.
• Maintain the single source of truth for scope, schedule, budget, risks, issues, decisions, change impacts, readiness, and overall status.
• Drive timely decisions, actions, and escalation when delivery, readiness, or adoption is at risk.

Change Management & Business Readiness

• Act as the change management lead for DairyLink and own the end-to-end change strategy, plan, governance, and execution.
• Conduct stakeholder, change-impact, and readiness assessments across functions, sites, roles, processes, and deployment waves.
• Partner with business and functional leaders to define the future-state operating impacts, role changes, local readiness requirements, and transition actions.
• Build and mobilize an effective sponsor and change-agent network with clear accountabilities, messages, and feedback loops.
• Integrate change deliverables and dependencies into the master plan, RAID process, stage gates, testing, cutover, go-live, and stabilization activities.
• Define and monitor readiness and adoption measures, identify resistance or capability gaps, and drive mitigation and reinforcement actions.
• Ensure affected employees and leaders are prepared to perform new processes, use the new systems, and sustain new ways of working.

Risk, Scope & Financial Management

• Own the integrated RAID process and proactively manage cross-functional delivery, people, readiness, and adoption dependencies.
• Establish and enforce formal scope and change control, including assessment of downstream business and organizational impacts.
• Maintain visibility to budget, actuals, commitments, forecast-to-complete, variances, and required change-management investments.
• Identify schedule, resource, financial, readiness, and adoption pressures early and drive corrective action.

Vendor & Partner Management

• Manage Alithya’s performance against agreed scope, milestones, deliverables, resource commitments, quality expectations, and change-management obligations.
• Challenge assumptions, estimates, forecasts, risks, change impacts, readiness claims, and adoption plans where appropriate.
• Require evidence of completion and corrective or recovery plans for at-risk delivery, readiness, or adoption commitments.
• Coordinate internal and external project, communications, learning, and change resources to ensure one integrated approach.
• Maintain a collaborative relationship with Alithya while protecting Gay Lea Foods’ interests, culture, employee experience, and decision authority.

Knowledge Transfer & Transition

• Ensure effective project and change-management knowledge transfer from Alithya and other external resources to Gay Lea Foods.
• Ensure appropriate documentation, support processes, business ownership, learning materials, reinforcement mechanisms, and internal capability are in place before project close.
• Capture delivery and change lessons learned and apply them throughout subsequent deployment waves.
• Transition ownership of adoption, performance support, and continuous improvement to the appropriate business and functional leaders.

Mandate & Authority

The Senior Project and Change Manager will have a strong mandate to drive delivery accountability, organizational readiness, and adoption across internal and external project teams. The role will:

• Challenge delivery assumptions, estimates, forecasts, change impacts, readiness assessments, and adoption plans.
• Require timely and complete information from workstreams, vendors, business leaders, sites, and change owners.
• Require corrective-action and recovery plans for missed or at-risk delivery, readiness, learning, communication, and adoption commitments.
• Independently assess and report overall program health, business readiness, stakeholder alignment, and adoption risk.
• Escalate unresolved risks, issues, decisions, resource constraints, resistance, capability gaps, and vendor-performance concerns.
• Recommend acceptance or rejection of key deliverables and readiness to proceed through major project gates, deployments, and go-live.
• Advise leaders on sponsorship actions, stakeholder interventions, and reinforcement required to achieve sustainable business outcomes.

Material decisions related to funding, scope, contracts, risk acceptance, workforce matters, and go-live remain with the appropriate Gay Lea Foods Sponsor or Steering Committee.

Required Experience

• Significant experience leading large-scale ERP implementations and associated organizational change through mobilization, design, build, testing, go-live, stabilization, and adoption.
• Demonstrated experience as the client-side Project, Program, or Change Lead for a major ERP transformation.
• Strong experience managing a systems integrator or implementation partner and coordinating internal and external change resources.
• Expertise in integrated planning, critical-path management, RAID, scope/change control, budget management, forecasting, change-impact assessment, stakeholder engagement, communications, learning, readiness, and adoption.
• Experience leading executive governance, Steering Committee reporting, sponsor alignment, and change leadership forums.
• Demonstrated experience with testing, cutover, go-live, stabilization, business readiness, training deployment, and post-go-live reinforcement.
• Proven ability to lead complex cross-functional teams, influence leaders, manage resistance, and create accountability in a matrix environment.
• Strong executive communication, facilitation, negotiation, coaching, and problem-solving skills.

Preferred Experience

• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management implementation experience.
• WMS implementation experience, particularly within manufacturing or plant environments.
• Multi-site or wave-based ERP deployment and change leadership experience.
• Experience in food, dairy, consumer products, manufacturing, distribution, or another operationally complex environment.
• Experience building change capability and transferring ownership to business leaders and local change networks.
• PMP and Prosci or comparable project/program and change-management certification.

Gay Lea Foods is a Canadian, dairy farmer‑owned co‑operative with a clear purpose: to enrich life with dairy. Founded in 1958, the co‑operative produces high‑quality dairy products while creating lasting value for farming families, meaningful opportunities for employees, and positive impact in communities across Canada. As a co‑operative, Gay Lea Foods believes that when the business succeeds, its members, people, and communities should succeed along with it. To learn more, visit gaylea.com.

Gay Lea Foods is an equal-opportunity employer and values diversity in our workplace.

Reasonable accommodation is available upon request throughout our recruitment and selection process.

Gay Lea Foods may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support aspects of the recruitment process, including screening and assessment.

We are currently accepting applications for this open position.

Thank you for your interest in Gay Lea Foods.

Wishing you all the best with your career search!