Atkins Infrastructure division are looking to appoint a
Practice Director for our
Building Design Practice. This is a great opportunity for a talented individual who can inspire our people and collaborate with clients and internal stakeholders to shape the future of Atkins. Our Building Design Practice Director will report directly to Mike McNicholas, the Managing Director of the Infrastructure business, and will be an integral part of our Senior Leadership Team.
The majority of employees within the Infrastructure business sit within four diverse practices – Engineering, Building Design, Environment and Project Delivery. The Building Design practice brings together around 1000 professionals and offers a unique breadth of services across disciplines including: Architecture & Masterplanning, Building Services, Building Structures and Creative Design.
Objective
The Infrastructure Division operates in a matrix model and over the last two years Building Design has been shaped to reflect the unique characteristics of the discipline areas it contains, and the blend of work being a mix of major projects across all our sectors, and local multi-disciplinary projects won and delivered by the practice itself on a regional/local basis. Leadership of the team will be judged in the context both of what needs to be nurtured, and what needs to change to deliver the vision the team have developed so far. Our objectives are thus:
• Leadership of the talent and discipline groups in the Building Design practice to enhance our technical excellence, maintaining excellence and identity
• Work with the market and business development teams to engage with clients and actively sell our technical capabilities to suit service line requirements of the markets
• Engender a culture of entrepreneurship, agility and customer focus and maintaining in particular a client focus and a philosophy of everybody sells, particularly in or regional teams
• Enthuse our people through effective performance and development plans that align to their career opportunities
• Maintain utilisation within the team in the UK through efficient resource management whilst facilitating the flow of work to the Global Design Centre (GDC)
• Ensure we have sufficient resources with the right skills to deliver our current and future market strategies. This includes those within the practice, colleagues in our GDC and through our supply chain partners
• Leadership of Design Transformation as it applies to the Practice
Core Responsibilities
• Lead a practice group recognised for technical excellence and ability to flexibly respond to business needs
• Drive technical best practice, knowledge sharing, and process standardisation /optimisation across practice group
• Work with Mike McNicholas Divisional MD to drive collaboration across markets and divisions
• Liaise through the Operations Directors (as above overall lead) with the Market Directors to establish resource demand based on pipeline of opportunities in collaboration with divisional resource managers
• Manage practice group performance with focus on meeting or exceeding productivity targets and keeping break even rates as low as possible
• Responsible for winning work through maximising additional/repeat/follow-on work from clients. Help drive innovation in service offerings
• Ensure skills and capacity meet the needs of the target markets through targeted recruitment and focused staff development
• Maximise component of resource group work delivered from the Global Design Centre
• Identify where skills are not available in-house and work with external alliance partners and subcontractors to deliver project needs
• Motivate and inspire managers and team members ensuring they are challenged, stretched and developed with succession plans in place.
• Provide technical experts to supporting strategic bids and deliver BAU bids within Discipline Group
• Maintain and nurture the sense of purpose of the team, within the purpose and strategic goals of the Division
Requirements
• Proven experience in a leadership role, preferably in the same or comparable practice area
• Strong collaborative behaviours to interface with other Practice Directors, Market Directors and other stakeholders
• A high expectation of performance for themselves and other members of the team, coupled with a drive for continuous improvement
• Customer focused with excellent relationship management skills
• Proven business acumen with a demonstrated knowledge of identifying potential value creation.
• As a technical power house leader, a proven ability to recruit, develop, and lead technical teams is an advantage
• An understanding of large and complex programmes and the dynamics of strategic and tactical resourcing of the same is key as Infrastructure scales up the nature of its work
• Be available to travel across UK and overseas as required
Closing Date for Applications: Friday 11th January 2019
Interviews: likely to take place in London on Wednesday 23rd January 2019
This role may require security clearance and offers of employment will be dependent on obtaining the relevant level of clearance. If this is necessary it will be discussed with you at interview.
If applying to this role please do not make reference to (in conversation) or include in your application or CV, details of any current or previously held security clearance.
