Infrastructure Supply Chain & Ops Leader in Manchester

The UK government’s “UK Infrastructure: A 10 Year Strategy” sets out a long-term, cross-sector plan to drive economic growth, deliver net zero, and improve public services. With a £725 billion commitment, the strategy prioritises stability, private investment, and robust delivery across transport, energy, digital, water, housing, and social infrastructure, giving confidence and direction across the entire supply chain.

However, infrastructure supply chain and operations are facing unprecedented global uncertainty, risk and volatility. Sustainable infrastructure will play a critical role in delivering this strategy and in overcoming these challenges. Building a career in this sector offers diverse opportunities on some of the UK’s most transformational and iconic projects.

The opportunity is to take your career to the next level and join a high performing and inclusive team, working collaboratively with some of the largest infrastructure projects in the world as they seek to deliver, operate and transform. Specifically, our teams focus on the following core areas:

• The initiation and successful delivery of transformation programmes, tackling our clients’ most pressing and complex initiatives
• Sustainable infrastructure to support the government’s green infrastructure plan and ambition to deliver net zero to the UK
• The involvement in early stage, large scale infrastructure project development activities, as well as ongoing support, to drive more successful infrastructure project delivery

We are focused on growing our supply chain capability in the infrastructure market across a wide range of clients within a variety of sectors, including transport, energy, defence, utilities, digital and social infrastructure.

We value curious thinkers who have the courage to lead, great communicators who do not take themselves too seriously, flexible collaborators who build relationships based on doing the right thing, and innovative problem-solvers who use their experience to ultimately find a better way.

Your Key Responsibilities include:

• Building, maintaining and strengthening client relationships, acting as a trusted advisor in at least one of: supply chain, operations, sustainability within the infrastructure sector
• Leading one or more workstreams end-to-end, owning the workplan, dependencies, RAID, and delivery of outcomes within your remit
• Managing day-to-day delivery with the client and EY team, coordinating cross-functional inputs to ensure pace and alignment
• Shaping and quality assuring client-ready outputs (reports, documents, presentations), synthesising analysis into clear insights and practical recommendations
• Owning quality and delivery excellence for your workstream(s), proactively identifying risks and taking corrective action to exceed client expectations
• Coaching and developing junior team members, providing on-the-job guidance, feedback and oversight to build capability and confidence
• Playing an active role in business development, coordinating proposal inputs, shaping approach and storyline, and supporting tender responses
• Contributing to internal practice development, building infrastructure-relevant capability and collateral
• Supporting EY’s market positioning in UK infrastructure, by contributing to points of view, credentials, and go-to-market activities aligned to priority accounts and sectors

Your Experience should include an understanding of the UK infrastructure sector, whether from experience working in industry, government or a management consultancy environment. Knowledge of one or more of the following sectors is preferred: transport, energy, defence, utilities, digital and social infrastructure.

Managers are expected to have demonstrable experience in at least one of the areas below, and working knowledge across multiple others:

• Leading the design and/or implementation of operating models, delivery models and transformations in infrastructure or a related sector
• Owning workstream-level delivery of commercial, procurement and supply chain strategies
• Hands-on contracts experience, including managing contract development and change
• Delivering strategic sourcing / category management activity and supply chain mapping
• Supporting improvements to operations and asset management for major assets and networks
• Contributing to policy development and stakeholder engagement in infrastructure contexts
• Developing HMT Green Book-aligned business cases
• Designing and delivering end-to-end solutions that enable sustainable change
• Programme and project management delivery, including governance, plans, RAID and benefits tracking

Qualifications required include excellent verbal and written communication skills, strong stakeholder management skills, and demonstrable experience leading workstreams / small teams. A willingness to travel and work across the UK and potentially overseas is also necessary.

What We Offer includes a competitive remuneration package, support for flexible working and career development, and a commitment to being an inclusive employer. We strive to achieve the right balance for our people, enabling us to deliver excellent client service whilst allowing you to build your career without sacrificing your personal priorities.

If you can demonstrate that you meet the criteria above, please contact us as soon as possible.