Buro Happold
Security and Public Safety Discipline Lead
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The Security & Public Safety Discipline Director
The Security & Public Safety Discipline Director provides strategic, commercial, operational, technical, and people leadership for the UK+ Security & Public Safety Consulting Discipline. The role is accountable for sustainable growth, profitability, technical quality, client success, and the development of a capable, collaborative, and resilient team aligned with Buro Happold’s business objectives and values.
The role represents the discipline internally and externally, builds market presence, maintains high standards of professional practice, and ensures that immediate commercial priorities are balanced with long-term capability, succession, and service development.
This is both an operational and strategic role. The discipline exists as a part of a range of technical disciplines which together create the Specialists Consulting group. The discipline itself needs to operate profitably and within an atmosphere of mutual support and personal development which we would expect the Discipline Leader to encourage and implement. The Discipline Leader would seek to grow the capability of the team as a response to the growing demands of our clients.
Beyond the discipline we would look to the Discipline Leader to work with other technical disciplines and Project Principals to create new commercial opportunities for Buro Happold through collaborations between teams. Specifically, we would seek a leader of this group who can nurture a world-class leading Security consultancy and continue developing our offer at a global level within the firm collaborating with façade leaders in other regions.
Ultimately, the Discipline Leader will provide leadership to individuals and teams, as well as the UK Security group as a whole. The Discipline Leader will demonstrate commitment to leadership, commercial performance, technical innovation, and work winning as well as stretching boundaries of the service offer.
Core Accountabilities
Strategy and Growth
- Develop and maintain the discipline delivery plan, aligned with business unit, regional, and corporate objectives.
- Define short-, medium-, and long-term growth priorities, including emerging markets, new services, and strategic opportunities.
- Establish and communicate a clear direction for the discipline, supporting constructive change and continuous improvement.
- Represent the discipline in internal leadership forums and through selected external industry, client, and professional networks.
Commercial Performance and Finance
- Accountable for commercial performance, including revenue, gross margin, operating profit, profitability, utilisation, revenue per head, budget performance, and overhead expenditure.
- Lead annual business planning, budgeting, forecasting, and performance review with relevant regional and finance leadership.
- Maintain clear visibility of pipeline, conversion, opportunities, risks, and operational efficiency, taking action where performance requires improvement.
- Ensure project portfolios under the role holder’s leadership are commercially successful, risk-managed, and appropriately reported.
Clients, Work Winning, and Market Development
- Develop and maintain strategic client relationships both internally and externally, supporting key accounts, repeat business, and direct-to-client commissions.
- Sponsor major pursuits, framework opportunities, proposals, submissions, and interviews where senior discipline leadership is required.
- Work with technical and business development colleagues to convert high-quality opportunities aligned with Buro Happold’s strategy and values.
- Contribute to market development through publications, speaking engagements, and participation in professional forums where appropriate.
Technical Leadership, Quality, and Governance
- Provide senior technical leadership and assurance across the discipline, supporting consistent standards, quality processes, and professional practice.
- Be a credible technical lead in at least one area of security consulting, such as protective security, cyber security, blast engineering, resilience, operational security, security systems engineering, or public safety advisory.
- Sponsor technical guidance, methodologies, tools, innovation, and knowledge-sharing across the discipline and wider practice.
- Ensure design rigour, quality assurance, risk management, and technical reviews are planned and delivered on relevant projects.
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Project Leadership and Delivery
- Provide executive project leadership where appropriate, including acting as Project Director on selected projects or multidisciplinary commissions.
- Support client relationships, project performance, delivery quality, commercial outcomes, and portfolio risk management.
- Balance project and non-project commitments to support personal delivery, business leadership, and discipline development.
People, Culture, and Inclusion
- Create the conditions for a high-performing, engaged, inclusive, and collaborative discipline culture.
- Support line managers and project leaders with clear expectations, coaching, delegation, feedback, and accountability.
- Lead recruitment planning, workforce growth, succession planning, capability reviews, mentoring, professional registration support, and leadership development.
- Promote wellbeing, inclusion, internal progression, and constructive collaboration between offices, teams, regions, and disciplines.
Resource, Capacity, and Operations
- Oversee discipline resource planning, utilisation, workload balancing, and workforce forecasting.
- Coordinate workshare and skills deployment across offices, regions, and international teams where appropriate.
- Maintain visibility of capability gaps, capacity constraints, and operational issues, and work with relevant teams to resolve them.
Service Development and Innovation
- Develop and improve consulting services, including advisory-based offers, digital and automated solutions, recurring revenue opportunities, and improved delivery methods.
- Encourage experimentation, creativity, and continuous learning while ensuring that new services are commercially viable and technically robust.
- Build relationships across clients, industry, government, academia, and professional bodies to support capability growth and market relevance.
Risk, Compliance, and Reporting
- Ensure compliance with corporate governance, quality, health and safety, equality, diversity, inclusion, ethical, and risk management requirements.
- Protect the reputation of the business through clear governance, responsible decision-making, and appropriate escalation of risk.
- Report discipline performance, risks, opportunities, and actions through relevant UK Specialist Consulting and regional leadership forums.
Success Measures
Success will be assessed through a balanced set of financial, growth, client, technical, people, operational, and governance outcomes, including:
- Delivery of the discipline strategy and achievement of agreed business plan targets.
- Sustainable revenue growth, profitability, utilisation, gross margin, operating profit, and revenue per head.
- Growth in work won, pipeline value, conversion, direct client revenue, repeat business, and strategic account development.
- Strong client satisfaction, consistent technical quality, effective assurance, and reduced project rework or avoidable issues.
- Employee engagement, retention, wellbeing, inclusion, internal progression, succession readiness, and reduced key-person dependency.
- Effective resource planning, collaboration, workshare, capacity management, and workforce forecasting.
- Launch and growth of relevant services, innovation initiatives, market profile, and strategic partnerships.
- Robust governance, audit outcomes, risk visibility, and timely completion of agreed actions.
Experience and Qualifications
Essential
- Significant experience leading a security consulting, engineering, advisory, or related professional services business, practice, or discipline.
- Strong commercial, operational, business development, and work-winning capability, supported by a relevant client and industry network.
- A strong delivery track record in security consultancy or closely related security, resilience, cyber, engineering, or public safety disciplines.
- Experience leading, developing, and retaining multidisciplinary teams, including senior specialists and emerging leaders.
- Demonstrated ability to deliver profitable growth, high-quality project outcomes, and effective client relationships.
- Specialist expertise in at least one area of security consulting, such as resilience, protective security design, security systems engineering, security management, or public safety advisory.
- Good understanding of relevant risk, security, resilience, operational security, cyber, and information security, public safety, and related consulting disciplines.
- Excellent communication, stakeholder management, negotiation, and consultancy skills, including the ability to work constructively across complex client and organisational environments.
- A coaching-oriented leadership approach, with the ability to develop colleagues, encourage collaboration, and maintain accountability for outcomes.
- Relevant professional accreditation, chartership, registration, or equivalent professional standing, or active progression towards it.
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Desirable
- International project or market experience.
- Experience operating in a matrix or globally distributed organisation.
- Experience coordinating cross-region workshare or globally distributed teams.
- Experience developing new service offerings, advisory models, business lines, or recurring revenue services.
- Relevant industry qualifications, professional memberships, or recognised professional contribution.
- Ability to travel where required for the role.
Leadership Expectations
- Act with integrity, professionalism, and accountability.
- Build trust through openness, transparency, and reliable follow-through.
- Empower others through coaching, delegation, and meaningful leadership opportunities.
- Promote collaboration across teams, disciplines, offices, and regions.
- Encourage innovation, creativity, learning, and constructive challenge.
- Champion Buro Happold values, culture, client service, technical excellence, and commercial discipline.
What We Offer You
- Bring your knowledge and expertise to one of the world’s most respected consultancies.
- Hybrid working arrangements.
- Attractive salary and benefits package including private medical insurance, life assurance, and income protection.
- 10% Car allowance.
- Holiday entitlement of 25 days per annum (exclusive of bank holidays) and flexible holiday arrangements.
- Generous company pension scheme.
- Flexible benefits including cycle scheme, dental insurance, optical cover, travel insurance, season ticket loans, and corporate discounts.
- Enhanced parenthood leave policies.
- 3pm finish on the last Friday of the month.
- A strong commitment to your continuous development. Whatever stage in your career, we have a learning and development programme that will enable and empower you.
- Entitlement to two memberships to professional bodies or subscriptions.
- A commitment to your wellbeing through a comprehensive employee assistance programme and wellbeing activities. A supportive and inclusive environment that will welcome you through social and outreach activities from the Young Employees Forum to mentoring.
- An international culture that wherever your career takes you at Buro Happold, you won’t be far from the exceptional.
A Place for Everyone
Buro Happold values an individual's flexible approaches to working patterns as an important part of how you work and achieve balance. We welcome applications from those who are seeking flexibility
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