Commercial Operations Director Rail

Poutrix

Arcadis is the world’s leading company delivering sustainable design, engineering, and consultancy solutions for natural and built assets.

We are more than 36,000 people, in over 70 countries, dedicated to improving quality of life. Everyone has an important role to play. With the power of many curious minds, together we can solve the world’s most complex challenges and deliver more impact together.

Role description:

To align our Project performance, service, resourcing and project risk activities within the Rail sector of UK mobility to ensure consistency in approach, operations & speed of service transformation.

Role accountabilities: Project Performance

• Manage “levers” for project performance via leading indicators – these are the basis to trigger increasing levels of intervention for variance.
• Consistent managing of project performance vs “as sold” with solid forecasting.
• Includes non-financial execution basis (GEC, Sustainability, etc.).

Project Governance & Change Control

• Formal Pursuit to Win to Deliver to Results hand-off between Growth & Operations to document baseline scope, price, execution basis, risks & contingency.
• Improved compliance with, and effectiveness of, project reviews.
• Close review of scope and change control.

Project Cash Collection

• Active management of project cashflow, including clear understanding of baseline; visibility of DRO performance, unbilled receivables (WIP) and AR.

Compliance

• Actively follow up where Projects are not performing and hold areas responsible for actions to restore performance.
• Work closely with peers in Finance, Sales & Operations to support systematic and collaborative approach to Making Every Project Count.

Service

• Actively create environment for adoption of service best practice including standardization, automation and digital tools.
• Ensure service change is operationalized across the Business Areas and leadership understand and are acting to their role on Service.

Operational

• Governance of Project Set up/handover (country size dependent).
• PM Allocation.
• In alignment with BA Operations Director specific training to support increased capability of the PM Cohort.
• Project Reviews.
• Risk Regime in place.
• Project/commercial support, and deep dive when required on specific projects or bids.
• Collaborating with growth/finance/legal.
• Key input into the High-Risk Project Watch List and Risk & Opportunities Register to understand key risks for projects.
• Participation and visibility of resource supply & demand forecasting and resultant plans working with Business Area Operations Director and other Commercial Operations Directors for the Business Area.

Key shared accountabilities

• Interface point with Business Area (BA) Operations Director.
• Interface with BA Global Excellence Centre (GEC) and Make Every Project Count lead.
• Interface with Growth on key pursuits.
• Interface with Quality and Safety Leads.
• Responsible for EBITA, Billability, Project Risk and Multiplier in conjunction with Managing Director Rail.

Decision rights

Owns:

• Multiplier decisions across sector.
• GEC/Resource Planning and billability decisions across sector.
• Reporting to support UK Mobility reporting through to the Global Business Area.

Influences:

• Bids, pricing and client decisions within country and GEC.

Vetoes:

• Projects below margin or targets. Project Manager categorization.

Qualifications & Experience:

The candidate should have a bachelor or master’s degree and at least 10+ years of experience leading and growing a significant business function within a multinational engineering or professional services firm. The candidate will be able to inspire multi-disciplinary teams around a common purpose and demonstrate significant leadership capability.

The right candidate possesses a high level of intellectual, professional and interpersonal agility and flexibility. Further the candidate will bring excellent interpersonal skills and the ability to collaborate at all levels of the organization in particular senior levels. A pragmatic attitude is vital.

Further requirements and competencies:

• An excellent understanding of and appreciation for business needs.
• A well-developed understanding of and appreciation for organizational mission, values, and goals and consistent application of this knowledge.
• Observation and persuasion skills especially with internal stakeholders (e.g. Project Managers Directors in UK, and local workforce).
• An ability to communicate complex issues to diverse audiences, orally and in writing, in an easily understood, authoritative, and actionable manner.
• Time management and ability to multi-task with competing priorities.
• Excellent decision-making capabilities and ability to make decisions and deal with conflicting priorities.

For this role Arcadis values professional experience across the following priority areas:

• Leading transformation: Ability to bring people on a journey to the unknown, creating a sense of stability and security in uncertain times, avoiding change fatigue.
• Managing change: Managing change e.g. divestments or mergers/acquisitions, growing a start-up, or leading change into other market/services or products, operating with new business models, turning around underperforming businesses, programs or teams and driving standardization and automation at scale.
• Data and technology: Adopting data-driven decision making, leveraging data to create and demonstrate value. Tech savvy and comfortable and curious about technologies.

Aligned to the Arcadis Leadership model we seek Arcadians with a strong fit to our leadership success profile, to build and drive our culture of inclusion, accountability, human-centricity, and sustainability. Successful Arcadians will possess strong learning agility, combined with a balanced mix of being curious, driving success and igniting passion.

Be curious:

• Demonstrate and develop curiosity in oneself and others, bringing clients and Arcadians on a journey of discovery and co-creation.
• Have a global, strategic, and future thinking mindset.
• Are digitally-savvy, entrepreneurial and innovative.
• Build organizational networks that are value-adding, engaging and purposeful.
• Incorporate a human-centric, experimentation-led and continuous learning mindset to lead innovation and transformation.
• Actively engage diverse points of view and manage healthy issues-based conflict.

Drive success:

• Create a sense of shared ownership and accountability balancing this with decisiveness and holding others to account for delivery.
• Take ownership for own responsibility, creating clarity and motivating and aligning others.
• Internalize organizational goals, making them one’s own personal stretch goals.
• Are outcomes focused and tackle challenges head-on.
• Demonstrate commercial acumen in general, and specifically with regards to sustainable solutions.
• Actively shape the future of the organization.

Ignite passion:

• Personally, role model own commitment to improving quality of life and putting sustainability at the core.
• Apply an adaptive style to engagement that is culturally sensitive and appeals to the personal needs of others.
• Bring clarity and manage anxiety in others, through clear communication and inspiring storytelling.
• Integrate their work, helping others make the connection between their work and the bigger picture.
• Maintain personal resilience and rebound from setbacks and help others to do the same.
• Build trust through authenticity, demonstrating integrity and courage regarding own convictions.

Why Arcadis?

We can only achieve our goals when everyone is empowered to be their best. We believe everyone’s contribution matters. It’s why we are pioneering a skills-based approach, where you can harness your unique experience and expertise to carve your career path and maximize the impact we can make together.

You’ll do meaningful work, and no matter what role, you’ll be helping to deliver sustainable solutions for a more prosperous planet. Make your mark, on your career, your colleagues, your clients, your life and the world around you.

Together, we can create a lasting legacy.

Join Arcadis. Create a Legacy. Our Commitment to Equality, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging

We want you to be able to bring your best self to work every day which is why we take equality and inclusion seriously and hold ourselves to account for our actions. Our ambition is to be an employer of choice and provide a great place to work for all our people. We believe that by working together diverse people with different experiences develop the most innovative ideas. Equality, diversity and inclusion is at the heart of how we improve quality of life and we work closely with our people across six ED&I Workstreams: Age, Disability, Faith, Gender, LGBT+ and Race. A diverse and skilled workforce is essential to our success.