Associate Director - Consents Management

Role Informa on

Location (supported by Hybrid Working) Manchester

Full Time or Part Time Full Time

Ardent is the UK’s leading provider of land, consent management and stakeholder engagement services to support major infrastructure and regeneration projects from concept to delivery.

We are Project Managers, Chartered Surveyors, Engagement specialists and Land Reference rs, based in London, Birmingham, Warrington, Leeds, Glasgow and Dublin and supporting projects throughout the UK and Ireland.

Established in 1992, we are a high-growth business with a client portfolio that includes some of the biggest players across our four core sectors of transport, renewables, utilities and regeneration.

We are passionate about delivering life-improving change for communities and future generations and we are proud to play a key role in facilitating and delivering the UK and Ireland’s net zero and growth agendas, improving connectivity, enabling the repurposing of high streets and town centres and delivering new homes.

We are problem-solvers that are outcome focused working collaboratively with our clients to provide strategic advice and services that identify and mitigate risks, deliver efficiencies, delivering buildable consents and then implementing those consents to positively change people’s lives and the world that we live in.

Our Ardent purpose is
- Delivering life improving change for communities and future generations.

Associate Director of Consent Project Management plays a pivotal role in delivering this purpose by providing senior project leadership across the full lifecycle of planning consent delivery and implementation. This is an emerging discipline within the sector, integrating traditional project management with the complex requirements of Development Consent Orders (DCOs), Transport and Works Act Orders (TWAOs), and other major consents.

This role exists to:

• Lead and manage the end-to-end consenting process, either fully or in part, ensuring that consents are strategically planned, effectively coordinated and delivered on time.
• Provide project management leadership across multi-disciplinary teams including planners, environmental specialists, engineers, legal advisors, land teams and stakeholder engagement.
• Integrate consents into design, procurement and construction, ensuring that all obligations, constraints and requirements are embedded, understood and complied with.
• Manage post-consent implementation, including requirement/condition discharge, operational approvals and compliance monitoring.
• Reduce programme risk, improve certainty and help clients secure and implement consents that are buildable, compliant and aligned with project outcomes.
• Promote and develop the Consent Management offering alongside cross selling of all other Ardent services.

The successful candidate will contribute to People Leader KPIs by:

• Building an engaged, inclusive and high-performing team. Supporting commercial success through effective programme delivery. Promoting a culture of health, safety and wellbeing in all work streams. Role-modelling inclusive behaviours and enabling a culture that reflects Ardent’s values.
• They will also meet our People Leader Metrics through:
  Demonstrating a strong thirst for knowledge and driving continuous learning. Ensuring adherence to the Quality Management System (QMS).

The Consent Management Associate Director is an ambassador of the Ardent values, promoting a culture of integrity, collaboration and excellence, inspiring a commitment to inclusivity, change and innovation.

Thirst for knowledge
- We embrace every opportunity to…