Role: Infrastructure Development Director - Waste and Resource Management

Location: UK Flexible

Our vision is to create a safe and sustainable world

Ricardo plc is a global strategic, environmental, and engineering consulting company, listed on the London Stock Exchange. With over 100 years of engineering excellence and employing close to 3,000 employees in more than 20 countries, we provide exceptional levels of expertise in delivering leading-edge and innovative cross-sector sustainable products and solutions. Every day, we enable our customers to solve the most complex and dynamic challenges to help achieve a safe and sustainable world.

Energy & Environment, one of Ricardo plc’s five operating business units, is a leader in sustainability consultancy, solving complex environmental challenges through industry-leading analysis, advice and data. With more than 40 years of heritage in addressing air quality, environmental and sustainability issues, our customers value us for our deep understanding and breadth of services covering the entire value chain from evidence, policy & strategy to implementation.

We are currently looking for a Technical Director - WTS to join our Waste & Resource Management Team.

Purpose

Ricardo Energy & Environment’s Waste & Resource Management (WaRM) business area provides a wide range of consultancy services to the waste management industry. One of our core service areas is waste infrastructure, providing technical due diligence, owners engineer and expert witness amongst other technical advisory services.

We require an outstanding individual to join the Waste Technical Services (WTS) team within the WaRM business area of our Sustainable Infrastructure and Operations (SI&O) practice, bringing their knowledge and experience to provide direction and oversight to the range of highly technical waste infrastructure projects being undertaken by the team, both in the UK and around the world.

The successful candidate will lead the development of Ricardo’s waste infrastructure support services both in the UK and around the world, with an initial focus on the Middle East. This senior role will play a critical part in building Ricardo’s technical support services offering, from the identification and development of leads and new opportunities through to providing services such as owner’s representative, developing the team required to successfully deliver these roles. This is likely to require frequent travel, particularly to the Middle East which is a target region.

The ideal candidate will have strong technical credentials with the ability to lead, inspire and develop engineers, whilst also having the ability to develop and maintain excellent client relations and promoting the Ricardo brand as a center of technical excellence. They should have experience of infrastructure development (ideally in the waste sector, but experience in other sectors would also be considered) and a clear idea of how to build and structure teams to support the delivery of complex infrastructure projects. They will work alongside the WTS team leader and the WaRM Business Area Manger to achieve the growth objectives of the business through the delivery of orders and profitable work with respect to technical support to clients and ensuring maximum commercial and technical effectiveness and efficiency is maintained. They will also offer market insight and knowledge and contribute to the BA strategy as well as its successful delivery.

The successful candidate will be involved in work that makes the most of their expertise and experience. They will be expected to provide support to the Business Development Director in bringing on new opportunities with a focus on supporting implementation of waste infrastructure projects, such as the provision of technical advisory and owner’s representative services. Other potential workstreams include due diligence and feasibility projects, market and technology reviews and the procurement of waste infrastructure for public and private sector clients (both in the UK and internationally).

Key accountabilities

• Reporting to the WTS Team Leader within the WaRM business area of Ricardo Energy & Environment’s SI&O practice.
• Responsibility for developing and leading the infrastructure support workstream within the WaRM BA, setting out team requirements and structure to provide support to clients in the UK and overseas.
• Provide leadership and promote a high-performance team culture.
• Identify leads or opportunities through close liaison with the regional business development team, and support the development of these opportunities through client meetings and preparing proposals.
• Actively engage in developing complex technical projects from concept through to implementation and take-over.
• Drive ongoing growth within developed and developing waste markets across the UK domestic and international arena by identifying new offerings, gaining market insights and supporting the development of leads and opportunities.
• Contribute to the development of an engineering team and culture that delivers best in class technical engineering support services to global waste markets.
• Ownership of key accounts or territories, with responsibility for overseeing a portfolio of projects to ensure consistency in delivery and high quality deliverables and seeking insights with a view to securing an ongoing pipeline of repeat work.
• Provide oversight and governance of project processes and standards to meet the expectations of Ricardo internally and also those of our clients.
• Assist with scoping and planning of projects in bids, ensuring that the client’s needs and overarching objectives are understood, as well as the opportunity and the risks, in order to avoid any potential expectation gap between service delivery and service sold.
• Encourage cross discipline collaboration with other internal and external staff members.

Key competencies and experience

• Experience of working in similar engineering support functions and teams.
• Overseeing of complete lifecycle engineering support and complex waste infrastructure projects.
• Excellent client management skills, with the ability to nurture professional relationships and steer opportunities from concept through to project stage.
• Nurturing and development of junior engineers to fulfil potential.
• Experience of bidding for projects within a consultancy environment.
• Ensure compliance with commensurate internal processes and external standards and regulations.
• Understanding and experience of delivering detailed technical studies within the bounds of defined contracts and specifications.
• Knowledge of waste treatment and management technologies.
• Knowledge of regulatory framework for the delivery of infrastructure projects.
• Excellent interpersonal skills, attention to detail and desire to deliver to the highest standards for all outputs whether written, presentational, or delivery, and conversed in face-to-face meetings with new and current clients.
• Producing, reviewing, verifying and approving technical Scopes of Work, assessing tender returns, then checking/assessing and/or approving the outputs to ensure that requirements are met.
• Feeding back lessons learnt for use on other projects.
• Good knowledge of coordination and integration of multi-disciplinary engineering systems.
• Constructive and proactive communication skills – verbal, written, and visual.

Skills and behaviours
Essential

• Willingness and ability to work oversees for periods of time (typically up to 1-2 weeks per month, but not fixed) as required by the project work in hand, in particular in Saudi Arabia and UAE
• Clearly demonstrable leadership skills with an ability to develop strategic plans.
• Substantial experience within engineering delivery for waste infrastructure projects.
• Excellent project management understanding and delivery within recognizable systems such as APM.
• Chartered Engineer and qualified within relevant engineering field.
• Broad experience in the design, installation, and commissioning of process systems.
• Good working knowledge of current legislation, standards and practices in process engineering systems.
• Ability to work to deadlines, under pressure and on own initiative.
• Evidence of continuing professional development and an ongoing commitment to undertake training and studies to meet the demands of both current and future legislation relating to the design of process / mechanical designs and building services.
• Possess good written and oral communication skills, and the ability to communicate well at all levels and be able to control certain financial aspects of contracts and/or projects.
• Experience in the planning, organising and control of sub-contractors, be able to provide services to agreed standards, time scales and budgets.
• Self-motivated.
• High attention to detail demonstrating accuracy and quality in all work.
• The post holder should possess a current valid driving licence.

Highly Desirable (but not essential)

• Postgraduate degree qualified.
• Professional membership within relevant field.
• Experience of Quality systems to BS EN ISO 9001

Working here

Ricardo is an exciting and rewarding place to work and you have the opportunity to make a difference. You will work with teams of talented, dedicated, and supportive individuals. Alongside having a fantastic opportunity to develop your career with us through our broad range of projects, mentoring opportunities and a personalised approach to your learning and development. We are always keen to hear from people who have driven, ambition and a flair for innovative thinking.

Wellbeing and work life balance

We offer flexible approaches to work, whether that's working from home, being in the office, or as a hybrid worker. We're happy to discuss flexible working arrangements. Wellbeing is at the core to our culture, allowing employees to flourish and to achieve their full potential. Our People are important to us, and we take pride in our wellbeing programmes and policies that support individuals including flexible working, carers policy, mental health first aiders and readily available support through our extensive Employee Assistance programme.

Diversity, Equality and Inclusion statement

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer, we believe in each person's potential, and we'll help you reach yours. We have an ambitious diversity, equality, and inclusion approach as explained here. We value diversity; recognising that a more diverse workforce creates a richer and more varied working environment. Diversity also drives innovation, by allowing us to offer our clients the best consultancy service that we can. As part of our commitment to engage positively and pro-actively with all our employees and ensure a culture of inclusivity, we are a recognised as a 'disability confident' employer.

Benefits

Our core benefits include 25 days' annual leave, plus 8 flexible bank holidays, a competitive company pension scheme, life assurance and professional subscriptions reimbursement. We also offer a wide range of flexible benefits to suit your lifestyle.

Once you have submitted your application a member of our Recruitment Team will be in touch. Please be aware that the timing can vary dependent on the volume of applications that we receive for each role and in some cases, we may start to review applications prior to the closing date.