Contracts Specialist

Based in Western Canada for over 110 years, McElhanney offers innovative and practical engineering, surveying, mapping, planning, landscape architecture, and environmental services. As a 100% employee-owned and operated firm, with over 1,500 staff members in 31 locations, we are proud to offer qualified staff with shareholding options in our company. At McElhanney, we work in teams to build strong connections with our staff, clients, and local communities.

Our employees enjoy working here because of our varied projects, high levels of autonomy, opportunities for career development, excellent total compensation and benefits package, and collaborating with a team of great professionals.

McElhanney has a new and exciting opportunity for a motivated and driven Contracts Specialist to work with our highly experienced and dynamic legal team to perform enterprise-level contract management responsibilities. Reporting to Corporate Counsel and working with our Executive Vice President–Culture, Strategy & Governance, you will support enterprise-level contract management by drafting, reviewing, and negotiating a widerangeof contracts, agreements, and proposal-related documents that enable our operational activities.

In this role, you will collaborate with project managers, business leaders, and client delivery teams to understand project requirements, identify and mitigate risk, and help ensure commercially competitive outcomes.

The ideal candidate brings strong communication skills, sound judgment, and the ability to build relationships across the organization. This role requires guiding project teams on contract strategy, risk awareness, and best practices. A high degree of comfort with technology is important, including a willingness to evaluate, adopt, and effectively use AI-enabled tools to support contract review, drafting, and risk identification, with a focus on improving efficiency and consistency.

This opportunity is well suited to individuals from a variety of professional backgrounds who have developed strong commercial judgment and an interest in contracts, negotiation, and risk management. Whether your experience comes from law, engineering, business, consulting, procurement, construction, contract administration, or a related field, you will play a key role in helping project teams understand contractual obligations, manage risk, and achieve successful project outcomes.

The role offers opportunities for growth as you take on increasingly complex contractual and commercial matters.

This is a full-time position. The successful candidate may be based in any of our office locations across British Columbia and Alberta and can work in-office or in a hybrid arrangement. Remote work may also be considered for the right candidate.

• You're someone who enjoys navigating contracts, negotiations, and commercial issues while helping teams make informed, risk-aware decisions.
• You bring strong business judgment and relationship-building skills and are comfortable partnering with project teams, leaders, and clients to achieve successful outcomes.
• You're excited by the opportunity to expand your expertise in contract management, risk mitigation, and commercial strategy while taking on increasingly complex and impactful work.

• Evaluate, draft, review, and negotiate a variety of contracts including RFQ/RFPs, standard form contracts, teaming arrangements, confidentiality, subcontracts, and service agreements for a variety of projects, including alternative delivery projects such as design-build, progressive design-build and alliance, as well as enterprise contracts such as leases, licensing, and technology agreements.
• Maintain and manage a repository of legal agreements and standard form contract templates, amending same to reflect new legislation, standards, and practices, as required.
• Liaise and develop effective relationships with internal interested parties at all levels of the organization while providing guidance on contractual, risk, and compliance related matters.
• Continuous improvement and modernization of our contracting practices to…