Design Projects Manager

Overview

Own end-to-end delivery accountability for all assigned design projects from contract award through design completion, ensuring every milestone, submission, and contractual obligation is met in full.

Manage a concurrent portfolio of projects across multiple sectors and scales, maintaining clear project health visibility at all times through structured reporting and milestone tracking.

Assign and direct the work of the Assistant Design Projects Manager across specific projects, calibrating workload to complexity and priority.

Develop and maintain master project delivery programmes, identifying critical path items, inter-dependency risks, and resource pinch points well in advance of impact.

Lead project kick-off processes, establishing delivery frameworks, communication protocols, and submission schedules aligned with the contract and client expectations.

• Serve as the primary contractual interface for all assigned projects — thoroughly understanding the scope of work, deliverable schedules, and obligations defined in each design services agreement.
• Monitor scope boundaries rigorously, identifying and formally processing all scope deviations, change orders, and variation requests in accordance with the contract mechanism and firm policy.
• Maintain a live contractual tracker for each project, documenting all amendments, approvals, extensions of time, and outstanding obligations.
• Ensure that all design submissions are reviewed for scope compliance and completeness prior to issue to the client or authority.
• Manage project closeout processes, ensuring all contractual deliverables are formally accepted, archived, and signed off.

• Act as the principal point of contact for clients across the project portfolio — building trusted, long-term relationships with both private developers and government/semi-government entities.
• Lead client meetings, design review workshops, authority coordination sessions, and stakeholder presentations — preparing structured agendas, facilitating productive discussions, and producing formal minutes of meetings.
• Manage client expectations proactively, communicating progress, risks, and decisions with clarity and professionalism at all times.
• Navigate government authority submission and approval processes — including MOMRAH, municipality, and other relevant regulatory bodies — coordinating submission strategies with the technical team.
• Represent the firm at project sites, client offices, and authority counters as required, maintaining the highest standards of professional conduct.

• Own the commercial performance of each assigned project — tracking actual hours consumed against planned fee budgets on a regular basis, and taking corrective action when consumption trends exceed projections.
• Prepare and present regular project financial health reports to the Design Director, highlighting fee burn rates, over-run risks, and commercial exposure.
• Coordinate with the Operations Manager to align production planning with fee budget availability, ensuring that design team deployment is commercially justified.
• Manage the identification, appointment, and contractual engagement of sub-consultants and specialist advisors on a project-by-project basis — covering disciplines or scopes that fall outside the firm s core services, or are engaged to manage production capacity constraints.
• Prepare sub-consultant scope briefs, evaluate proposals, negotiate fees, and administer sub-consultant agreements throughout the project lifecycle.
• Track sub-consultant deliverable schedules and fee drawdowns, ensuring alignment with the master project programme and the client contract.

• Work in close and structured collaboration with the Operations Manager to ensure design team resourcing, production scheduling, and delivery timelines are fully aligned across all active projects.
• Communicate client priorities, scope changes, and submission schedule updates to the Operations Manager promptly to enable agile production planning.
• Participate in regular operations and project management…