Senior Director, Critical Engineering Lead

Position Summary

The Senior Director, Critical Infrastructure Engineering Lead leads end-to-end lifecycle management and engineering reliability programs for critical facilities and infrastructure. This role is responsible for driving effective renewal, financial planning, and continuous improvement of preventive, predictive, and reliability-centered maintenance activities. The focus is to ensure best-in-class asset performance, risk mitigation, operational excellence, and long-term value creation for all assigned properties.

This pivotal role is not a hands‑on technician position; rather, it is a supervisory role focused on ensuring the reliability, uptime, and safety of all critical Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing (MEP), and life safety systems that support our research activities. The role will be responsible for managing vendor performance, implementing rigorous change management processes, and providing expert technical oversight to safeguard our critical operations.

Key Responsibilities

1. Preventive & Predictive Maintenance Leadership

• Oversee continuous improvement of the preventive and predictive maintenance programs to achieve superior asset uptime, mitigate downtime risk, and extend equipment life.

• Develop, review, and approve all Method of Procedures (MOPs) for work on critical systems to ensure risk is minimized.

• Manage the site's change management control process for all planned maintenance, ensuring proper scheduling and communication to reduce operational impact.

• Drive the integration of predictive analytics, IoT, and condition‑based monitoring technologies to identify and act on early warning indicators.

• Ensure the 24/7 reliability and operation of all building systems supporting labs, including but not limited to HVAC (AHUs, CRACs, Chillers), Electrical (UPS, PDUs, Generators), and Plumbing/Water systems.

• Set and enforce standards for maintenance compliance, frequency, and quality—ensuring all activities meet or exceed manufacturer, regulatory, and client requirements.

• Oversee the activities of contractors working within the building to ensure they are knowledgeable of the building's critical functions and adhere to all safety and operational standards.

• Identify and implement improvements to enhance operational efficiency, reduce costs, and improve system reliability.

• Maintain comprehensive maintenance records and documentation; ensure all actions and findings are logged and reported through the organization's digital platforms.

2. Asset Replacement Financial Planning

• Direct annual and multi‑year forecasting for critical asset replacement, integrating findings from asset appraisals and condition reporting.

• Develop and maintain capital cost histories and benchmarking data to continuously improve forecasting accuracy and financial discipline.

• Work cross‑functionally with client stakeholders and internal teams to refine spending priorities and validate capital allocation strategies.

• Support preparation and delivery of capital planning presentations, business cases, and financial reports to executive leadership.

3. Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) and Continuous Improvement

• Implement and operationalize a robust RCM framework for all critical assets, including risk‑based assessments such as Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA).

• Ensure rigorous and timely root cause analysis (RCA) for all critical system failures and performance deviations, and translate learnings into targeted action plans.

• Drive a proactive reliability culture by periodically auditing maintenance outcomes, validating program effectiveness, and sharing best practices and lessons learned across teams and functions.

• Collaborate with engineering and operations teams to develop, document, and update risk registers and criticality rankings for all major systems.

4. Lifecycle Asset Renewal

• Champion a structured, data‑driven asset appraisal program for all critical engineering assets under management.

• Oversee the development of annual and long‑term (5‑10 year) capital replacement and asset renewal plans, ensuring each plan is tightly aligned with asset age, redundancy, condition, maintenance…