Practice Manager

Atkins is one of the largest transportation consultancies in the UK, and a leading supplier of engineering services to government, regulatory and local authorities, infrastructure owners and operators. Major clients include Highways England, Local Authorities, TfL, HS2, Network Rail and London Underground, design and build contractors and other niche clients.

To meet our growth ambitions we are seeking a high calibre, naturally strong and courageous leader to join our business as a Practice Manager, playing a crucial part in leading teams of civil and structural engineering primarily based in our Trowbridge Office in Wiltshire. The individual will also contribute to our overall growth strategy by supporting the Local Authority market in the South West of England and South Wales, supporting the Regional Local Authorities Key Account Management (KAM) Lead – this will include undertaking Framework roles for existing contracts within our portfolio and helping to build relationships with Clients and Stakeholders, seeking and winning new opportunities.

Your objectives will be to:
• Enthuse and motivate our people through effective performance management and development planning
• Contribute to the successful delivery of the Engineering Central budget requirements, including productivity, management of overheads and headcount through effective management of resources
• Ensure we have sufficient resources with the right skills to deliver our current and future market strategies and targets, including throughflow of work to the Global Design Centre (GC)
• Support the Local Transport Market to deliver strong commercial and technical performance and demonstrate continuous improvement on existing Local Authority frameworks, and to identify, track and win new opportunities to deliver further growth
• Develop the offering of the Trowbridge Office / Wiltshire Practice Area across the internal Markets and to a potentially wider Client base

You will need to demonstrate that you fulfil the following requirements
• Appropriate academic and professional qualifications, including Chartered/Licensed status and Member of a recognised UK professional institution, e.g. ICE, IStructE, CIHT or similar
• Demonstrable leadership experience of an office and large team, ideally one delivering civil or structural consultancy engineering services, successfully managing team and individual performance
• Ability to provide strong safety leadership within dynamic working environments
• Strong business acumen with a demonstrable knowledge of identifying potential value creation, and experience in successfully leading and managing organisational change
• Proven track record in supporting the professional training and development of staff to achieve career objectives and academic and professional qualifications
• Extensive experience of working with Local Authorities as a Framework Director or Manager, delivering consultancy services, expanding scope and services provided, delivering best value and innovation
• Experience of developing strong and sustainable relationships with Clients and Stakeholders, understanding their requirements and aspirations, and working effectively with them to achieve their objectives
• Demonstrable evidence of directing, managing and winning bids
• Strong and effective communication skills
• Strong presenting, negotiating and influencing skills
• Strong organisational and leadership skills


Your primary responsibilities will be to:
Effectively manage the Wiltshire Practice Area to deliver business plan targets and create a safe and rewarding environment for staff
• Lead the Practice Team within the Trowbridge Office in a manner that it is recognised for technical excellence and ability to flexibly respond to business needs
• Provide line supervision, oversee career & talent development for the team
• Drive technical best practice, knowledge sharing, and process standardisation /optimisation across practice group
• Liaise through the Practice with the Market/client teams to establish resource demand based on pipeline of opportunities and allocate resources accordingly
• Manage practice team performance with focus on meeting or exceeding productivity and break even targets and controlling overheads to budget
• Work with the Practice Director to ensure skills and capacity meet the needs of the target markets through recruitment and focused staff development.
• Maximise the workload of the Practice delivered from the GDC (to achieve target)
• Act as a Project Director / Project Manager as appropriate and undertake technical delivery
• Win work through maximising additional/repeat/follow-on work from clients
• Act as Bid Director / Bid Manager as appropriate for Practice led bids
• Help drive innovation in service offerings
• Identify work opportunities and foster client relationships
• Ensure compliance with the Business Management processes & procedures and manage business risk
• Provide technical input to support strategic bids

Your secondary responsibilities will be to:
Support the Local Transport Market to deliver existing Frameworks and seek and win new opportunities
• Undertake Framework Director or Framework Manager roles on existing or new Frameworks, as appropriate
• Support the Regional Local Authorities KAM Lead to:
o Develop a regional business plan in line with the overall market objectives
o Develop growth opportunities outside the current contracts, broadening the base of Client contacts and seeking cross selling opportunities
o Generate new business with current and new customers
o Prepare local and regional bids as a Bid Director, Bid Manager or Contributor

The Individual
• A natural leader interested in making a difference, engaging with staff and driving a high performance team with a reputation for technical excellence and quality of delivery
• Naturally happy and competent leading change programmes and influencing stakeholders whilst working within constraints of a global company
• A hard working and flexible individual, who is reliable, proactive and innovative, whilst able to keep calm under pressure and when working to often demanding deadlines
• A high expectation of performance for themselves and other members of the team, coupled with a drive for continuous improvement
• Customer focused, including maintaining and driving client feedback programme
• Excellent interpersonal, organisational and communication skills both verbally and in writing
• Able to build and motivate a team and demonstrate good people management skills.
• Self-motivated and able to work both independently as well as within a larger multi-disciplinary team
• A supportive and encouraging approach to mentoring less experienced members of the team, combined with a passion for staff development
• Able to adapt to different cultures and working environments to build rapport with both clients and the Practice / Market teams
• Be available to travel across the UK if required and encourage mobility in the practice team

Key Measures
• Employee engagement, people development, employee performance indicators for practice team.
• Achieving budgeted productivity, overheads, headcount and Global Design Centre (India) targets for the team
• High Client satisfaction and year-on-year growth in revenue, margin, Global Design Centre volume and cross-selling in line with Market targets for Local Authority Contracts
• Expanded services to existing Local Authority Clients and securing contract extensions
Connecting countries, cities and communities, our teams work on some of the most challenging projects of our time.

Helping people to travel faster and more efficiently, we transform infrastructure. So, get on board and play a big part in our success.

We’ll value you for exceeding expectations and delivering innovative solutions that nobody else can. After all, we can’t achieve great things without you. So, you can look forward to fantastic rewards and development opportunities.