Balfour Beatty plc
Head of Pre-Construction - Buildings
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About The Role
Job Title: Head of Pre-Construction Buildings
Location: Maxim Park, Eurocentral, Scotland
Company: Balfour Beatty - Scotland
Are you a commercially minded pre-construction leader who can combine technical credibility, business development instinct and strong client relationships to help secure major projects?
We are looking for a Head of Pre-Construction to lead pre-construction activity across our Scotland Building business. Based from Maxim Park, Eurocentral, this is a senior leadership role for someone who can influence opportunity strategy, engage confidently with customers and stakeholders, and help convert complex opportunities into successful, deliverable projects.
You’ll operate at the heart of our work-winning strategy, bringing together estimating, planning, engineering, design, commercial and operational expertise to ensure our bids are competitive, commercially robust and deliverable. You’ll also play a key role in shaping opportunities early, strengthening customer relationships and helping position Balfour Beatty for future growth.
What you'll be doing
You’ll lead our pre-construction approach across priority building opportunities in Scotland, from early pursuit planning through bid governance and into operational handover.
A major part of the role will be ensuring that opportunities are shaped effectively from the outset, with the right technical, commercial and delivery thinking brought together to create compelling propositions for our customers.
You Will
- Lead multi-disciplinary pre-construction teams across estimating, planning, engineering and design management
- Drive structured pursuit planning across priority opportunities
- Work closely with Business Development and the wider Work Winning team to shape opportunities and improve bid conversion
- Engage with customers and key stakeholders to understand their requirements and help develop strong, technically credible solutions
- Ensure technical solutions are robust, deliverable and competitive
- Champion innovation and value engineering to create competitive advantage
- Provide assurance around cost, programme, methodology and risk
- Lead pre-construction governance from Gate 2 through to Gate 5
- Oversee cost modelling, benchmarking and risk/opportunity analysis
- Ensure appropriate commercial strategies are embedded within bids
- Balance competitiveness with appropriate risk-adjusted returns
- Drive consistency and quality across submissions
- Ensure a seamless transition from pre-construction into operational delivery
- Build capability, resilience and collaboration across the wider pre-construction team.
Who we're looking for
This role will suit a dynamic, personable and commercially astute senior leader who combines strong technical knowledge with the ability to build relationships, influence customers and help win major projects.
You will have significant experience of business development from a technical and construction perspective, with the ability to engage with customers early, understand their drivers and translate requirements into compelling technical and commercial solutions.
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You’ll be someone who is comfortable operating at senior level, representing the business externally and building trusted relationships with customers, consultants, partners and internal stakeholders. Just as importantly, you’ll have a strong track record of turning those relationships and opportunities into successful work-winning outcomes.
You’ll Bring
- A proven track record of winning business and converting major opportunities
- Significant experience in business development, client engagement and opportunity shaping from a technical standpoint
- Strong customer-facing skills and the ability to build credibility and trust quickly
- A dynamic and personable leadership style, with the confidence to influence at senior level
- A strong understanding of what creates a compelling technical and commercial proposition
- Proven experience leading major and complex pre-construction bids
- Strong strategic planning capability
- A detailed understanding of construction methodologies and delivery models
- Strong commercial and financial acumen across cost, value, margin and risk
- Experience leading complex, multi-disciplinary teams
- Excellent stakeholder management and influencing skills
- Deep knowledge of the pre-construction lifecycle, including estimating, planning, design and procurement
- Strong understanding of risk management, value engineering and bid governance
- Knowledge of the Scottish construction and building market
- Demonstrable success in improving bid quality, customer confidence and conversion outcomes.
Why Balfour Beatty?
This is an opportunity to take on a key leadership position within our Scotland Building business and have a genuine influence on what we pursue, how we position ourselves in the market and how successfully we convert opportunities into projects.
You’ll work across some of our most important future opportunities, collaborating with senior leaders and specialist teams across Business Development, Commercial, Operations, Design, Engineering and Work Winning.
It’s a role for someone who enjoys being at the front end of the business — building relationships, shaping solutions, leading teams and creating the conditions to win.
If you’re a proven work-winning leader who combines technical expertise, commercial instinct, strong business development capability and the ability to build lasting client relationships, we’d like to hear from
For further information about Balfour Beatty Scotland, please visit the Balfour Beatty careers website.
Why work for us
Day in, day out, our teams deliver some of the UK’s most ambitious, exciting and meaningful projects; developing, building and maintaining the vital infrastructure that supports national economies and strengthens communities.
Why join us?
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Benefits
As if contributing to and supporting work that makes life better for millions wasn’t rewarding enough, we offer a full range of benefits too. You’ll have the freedom to shape the package that’s right for you and your life. Here are some of our key benefits:
- Smart working, giving you more flexibility such as staggered start and finish times, with up to 40% remote working, where roles allow.
- 25 days paid annual leave (pro rata)
- Family friendly policies which include 28 weeks full pay for maternity/adoption leave and four weeks full pay for paternity/partners leave
- Pension, share incentive plan, volunteering leave, recognition schemes and much more…
About Us
From Dunfermline’s tramways in 1909 to highland hospitals today, Balfour Beatty has been trusted for over a century to deliver the complex and critical infrastructure and iconic buildings Scotland relies on.
We have the people, knowledge and experience to safely deliver projects right first time, maximising value for money and ensuring a positive social impact and inclusive economic growth for local communities.
Our award-winning sustainable projects, including active travel, Passivhaus and retrofit, demonstrate our commitment to supporting Scotland’s transition towards net zero in the built environment.
Diversity and inclusion
At Balfour Beatty we believe that diversity and inclusion are essential components of any successful, happy workplace. Through our Value Everyone Diversity and Inclusion Strategy and Action Plan, we are growing our diverse workforce and developing our inclusive culture where everyone is able to thrive and reach their full potential, regardless of their identity or background. To find out how we are making this a reality, visit www.balfourbeatty.com/diversityandinclusion
To help and support us with our desired commitment to create an inclusive culture we are members of WISE, enei, Business Disability Forum and the Association for Black and Minority Ethnic Engineers (AFBE). In 2020, we signed the Audeliss and Involve Open Letter to demonstrate our commitment to taking key long term and sustainable actions on Black Inclusion. Balfour Beatty is also a Gold Award holder in the Ministry of Defence 'Employer Recognition Scheme' and actively encourage applications from Armed Forces personnel, veterans and reservists.
As a Disability Confident Employer, we are committed to working with people who have disabilities and long-term health conditions to remove barriers for them in obtaining employment. We are also committed to offering applicants with a disability an interview if they meet the minimum requirements for the role. For more info, visit: https://disabilityconfident.campaign.gov.uk/
We are looking to continually improve our resourcing process and ensure that it is fair and inclusive for all. If you have any feedback on the process, please share this with us at: candidaterecruitmentqueries@balfourbeatty.com
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