Commercial Manager

Location: West Lutton

About

The Role Right across infrastructure, there's a requirement to not only maintain, but also renew and reimagine. Whatever stage you're at in your career, with us you'll have an opportunity to grow and develop. Delivering essential infrastructure services for life, while being safety first, and client and customer centric in a friendly, fun and respectful environment where you are encouraged to thrive.

Where will you be working? We help our clients safeguard the water supply, improve environmental performance and manage demand for future generations. We enhance and extend asset life, ensuring compliance with water quality and environmental standards. We're problem solvers with over 140 years of combined experience in engineering and infrastructure. This role will be within our Water and wastewater capital project delivery team.

Our teams deliver large-scale capital programmes aimed at keeping water infrastructure resilient for the long-term while protecting the environment. Want to be a part of it? What will you be doing? As the Commercial Manager (Pre-Contract), you'll play a pivotal role in setting projects up for commercial success from day one. Working closely with senior commercial leaders, operational teams, clients and supply chain partners, you'll help shape contract strategies, influence procurement decisions, and ensure robust commercial controls are established from the outset.

You'll lead or support pre-contract activities including contract briefings, developing commercial guidance, defining measurement and reporting requirements, and working with Procurement teams throughout the tendering process. You'll also support supplier evaluations, contract award recommendations, and manage TUPE-related commercial considerations where required. Once projects are underway, you'll take ownership of key commercial processes, ensuring valuations, applications, change management and contractual obligations are managed accurately and in line with contract requirements.

You'll oversee certifications, notices, cash collection processes, Early Warnings and Compensation Events, while providing commercial guidance and support to operational teams and acting as an escalation point for contractual issues and disputes. You'll maintain strong commercial control across the supply chain, validating cost information, overseeing subcontractor onboarding and governance, managing payments and accounts, and driving the resolution of commercial issues.

Working collaboratively with supply chain partners, you'll identify opportunities to maximise value, recover costs and reduce commercial risk. A key part of the role will involve maintaining accurate and compliant commercial records, ensuring all valuations, payments, notices, risks, opportunities and contract documentation are effectively managed and readily accessible for audit and assurance purposes. You'll also play a leading role in contract performance management, producing and reviewing forecasts, cashflow reporting and CVRs, providing clear insight into project performance, and helping operational teams understand and manage commercial risks and opportunities.

Through close collaboration with clients, you'll support KPI and SLA performance management to help secure successful commercial outcomes. Alongside managing your own responsibilities, you'll provide leadership and direction to junior commercial team members, helping to maintain high standards, develop capability and drive commercial best practice across the business. What you'll bring Do you hve a degree in Quantity Surveying or related discipline, or equivalent experience?

Desirable :
Other skills, experience, qualifications and professional memberships that will help you grow with us:
Do you have a professional accreditation such as RICS or CICES, or working towards? Have you got a good understanding of procurement processes and frameworks? Do you have experience working on large, complex or multi-site programmes? Are you someone who has familiarity with ERP or financial reporting systems? Have you got experience with SLAs, KPIs and performance-based contracts? Do you have exposure to dispute resolution and negotiations?

Have you got an understanding of inflation impacts and forecasting approaches? What's in it for you? We offer a range of benefits designed to support your life in and out of work, some of which include;
Contributory pension scheme Online GP service, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year Employee…