EC&I Manager

Hart Process Services (HPS) is a growing multidisciplinary design consultancy with approximately 40 engineers and designers, specialising in:

• Process Engineering
• Process Safety
• Electrical, Control & Instrumentation (EC&I)
• Mechanical, Piping and Layout
• Validation
• Project Management

We support a wide variety of clients in the whisky distilling, chemical, and pharmaceutical sectors. With around 30 active projects at any time, our typical design project values reach up to £3 million in fees.

The EC&I Engineering Manager will lead the Electrical, Instrumentation & Control discipline across HPS. This dual-role position combines technical leadership and team management with a strategic commercial focus — supporting proposal development, client engagement, and the wider growth of the business.

You will be responsible for managing the EC&I department’s operations, developing talent, ensuring project delivery, and actively contributing to client satisfaction and commercial success. In the early stages of the role, the EC&I Engineering Manager is expected to spend approximately 80% of their time on fee-earning project work. This will naturally be reviewed as the department and workload grow.

EC&I Department Management

• Leadership & Oversight: Line management for 4 EC&I engineers, 4 designers, and 1 apprentice designer. Weekly task alignment, workload balancing, and milestone tracking. Facilitate weekly 30-minute team meetings to assess progress and priorities. Conduct monthly one-to-one sessions and annual performance appraisals. Guide, mentor and support apprentices by providing regular feedback, and opportunities for skill development, ensuring alignment with both departmental goals and engineering standards.
• Project Alignment: Collaborate with Project Managers during project kick-off to align scope, resourcing, and deliverables. Assist project managers with identifying and mitigating project delivery risks. Ongoing support and oversight of EC&I resource deployment across projects.
• Technical Assurance & Design Governance: Implement and maintain HPS EC&I checking and approval procedures in line with company-wide technical assurance requirements. Act as EC&I discipline approver for defined deliverables, delegating checking responsibilities appropriately within the team. Ensure EC&I designs are consistently safe, compliant, and phase-appropriate across all projects. Escalate novel, high-risk, or safety-critical technical issues to the Technical Director.
• Planning & Reporting: Participate in weekly resource planning with the Operations Director and the Director of Projects. Attend quarterly management meetings to review departmental performance, inter-discipline coordination, and continuous improvement opportunities. Present departmental KPI’s, providing analysis of trends, opportunities, and risks.
• Performance Management: Define and track department-specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Drive process improvements and maintain high-quality technical delivery.
• Recruitment & Growth: Support recruitment of EC&I personnel, including assessing technical competencies. Mentor and develop the team to build future leadership and technical expertise.

Culture

• Embrace and actively promote company values through collaboration, ethical behaviour and teamworking. Build trust with client teams to make HPS the partner of choice through project delivery excellence.
• Lead assigned projects from an EC&I perspective, overseeing engineering deliverables and quality. Recognises that EC&I professionals typically specialise in one or two disciplines and therefore must demonstrate a sound technical grounding and working understanding of core principles across their weaker EC&I areas.
• Able to competently review, challenge, and integrate Electrical, Instrumentation, and Control designs by understanding intent, limitations, and interfaces, even where not a subject-matter expert.
• Demonstrates sufficient cross-discipline technical awareness to identify risk, ensure design coherence, and make informed engineering decisions across the full EC&I scope.
• Holds a good working knowledge of hazardous area design (ATEX / BS EN 60079) sufficient to act as design authority, review compliance, and provide hands-on support where required.
• Demonstrates a sound understanding of functional safety to BS EN 61511, enabling effective oversight of safety lifecycle activities and informed technical decision-making.
• Has a strong appreciation of EC&I requirements on GMP projects, including design intent, documentation standards, and verification expectations.
• Attend weekly internal design reviews to report progress and identify technical or commercial risks. Provide guidance to designers and review technical outputs before submission. Lead external design reviews with clients to ensure alignment and satisfaction.
• Input into project planning: manhour estimation, scheduling, and cost reporting. Ensure all designs meet applicable UK, EU, and client-specific standards and regulations.

Commercial and Business Development

• Lead EC&I input on proposal development: attend client sites for initial sales meetings, contribute to scope definitions, and produce manhour estimates. Provide strategic input into business development efforts to win new work and retain existing clients. Identify and follow up additional opportunities emerging from ongoing projects.

Client Relationship Management

• Build and maintain long-term relationships with key clients, understanding their needs and aligning HPS services accordingly. Maintain strong client satisfaction throughout project delivery, ensuring effective communication and professional representation of HPS. Capture lessons learned across projects and implement improvement actions within the department. Foster and promote a culture of accountability, client focus, and commercial awareness throughout the team.

Skills & Experience

Essential skills and qualifications:

• Demonstrable experience leading and managing engineering teams.
• Proven ability to act as technical lead / design authority on EC&I projects.
• Degree-qualified in Electrical Engineering or a related discipline.
• Strong experience in EC&I engineering within process industries.
• Track record of successful multi-disciplinary project delivery.
• Ability to contribute to and review commercial proposals and client scope documents.
• Comfortable engaging with clients and internal stakeholders at all levels.
• Knowledge of relevant UK and EU design regulations and standards.
• Familiarity with project controls including scheduling, cost tracking, and reporting.

Desirable skills and qualifications:

• Experience of functional safety design and good working knowledge of BS EN 61508 / 61511. TUV functional safety qualification or similar.
• Experience of ATEX hazardous area design and good working knowledge of BS EN 60079. CompEx Ex12 qualification or similar.

Working Conditions:

• Full-time position with occasional travel to project sites.
• Office based in Heaton Mersey, SK4 3GN.
• Flexibility in work hours may be required to accommodate deadlines and international time zones.

Company Health shield provided

Salary: £75,000 – £85,000 per annum (depending on experience)

Package: Performance-related bonus, pension, flexible working, and progression opportunity within a growing consultancy.

Please direct any applications to careers@hart-ps.com