National Discipline Director - Buildings

The Opportunity:

Provides national leadership across the Buildings specialist disciplines, including acoustics, civil and structural, fire, MEP, digital, sustainability and benchmarking, coordinating discipline teams across all regions and business centres within Buildings

Responsible for the preparation, communication, implementation and staff education of the Discipline technical strategy and business plan, ensuring outputs from Discipline Leaders are translated into clear actions and embedded across the Buildings business

Works collaboratively with the RBL, BCOLs and BCPLs as part of the Buildings BC leadership team to align technical excellence, operational delivery, growth and major project mobilisation

Leads, aligns and holds accountable the relevant Discipline Leaders to ensure capability, capacity, technical excellence, succession and innovation are developed and embedded within the Buildings BC, enabling the division to operate as one Buildings team and deliver major projects successfully

Purpose of Job:

Reporting to the Regional Business Leader, the National Discipline Director provides national leadership across the Buildings specialist disciplines, including acoustics, civil and structural, fire, MEP, digital, sustainability and benchmarking. The role exists to ensure these disciplines operate as connected, high-performing technical communities with clear leadership, consistent standards, strong succession plans and the capability to support growth, delivery and technical excellence nationally.

Success will be defined by clear ownership of technical excellence and the ability to bring the specialist disciplines together as one Buildings division, enabling the business to deliver major and complex projects with consistency, quality and confidence. Effective leadership of these specialist disciplines is critical to the performance, reputation and future growth of the Buildings business.

A key aspect of the role is ensuring that strategic technical direction set through the Discipline Leaders is translated into practical implementation plans, communicated clearly and embedded through education, engagement and follow-through with staff across the Buildings business. The NDD collaborates with Discipline Leaders and senior discipline colleagues to deliver specialist technical expertise to national and multi-region clients while supporting the Buildings Operations Directors and their teams in local and regional delivery.

With strong operational, commercial and leadership capability, The NDD is responsible for discipline business performance, growth objectives and implementation of the Buildings technical business plan. The NDD is not expected to be the technical authority across every specialism, but is accountable for ensuring the right technical leaders are in place, connected, supported and held accountable for discipline performance.

Leadership of Specialist Disciplines:

• Provide national leadership across the Buildings specialist disciplines, ensuring each has clear direction, accountable leadership, strong technical standards and a defined contribution to the Buildings business plan.
• Own and champion technical excellence across Buildings, ensuring discipline strategies, standards and lessons learned are applied consistently to support the successful delivery of complex and major projects.
• Establish a connected community of discipline leaders that shares knowledge, manages technical and commercial risk, supports work-winning and improves project delivery across all regions.
• Drive collaboration across disciplines and regions so Buildings operates as one integrated division, with the right specialist input, resource sharing and technical leadership brought together to deliver major projects.
• Ensure each specialist discipline has an agreed capability plan, succession plan and technical development roadmap aligned to current and future market needs.
• Set expectations for each discipline around technical excellence, quality, growth, resourcing, innovation, collaboration and market-facing contribution.
• Ensure the specialist disciplines are visible, valued and properly represented in Buildings strategy, business planning, quality forums, major pursuits and national client development.
• Ensure strategic outputs from Discipline Leaders are converted into practical implementation plans, education programmes and communication activity so staff understand the direction, expectations and required changes in day-to-day delivery.

Essential Functions:

Lead National Discipline Business Performance:

• Accountable for continuous improvement and effective management of discipline-specific aspects of Buildings BC performance.
• Lead pursuits with national client organisations and organisations with multi-region businesses.
• Review monthly financial statements with the RBL and BCOLs, ensuring performance is understood, challenged and optimised across the specialist disciplines.
• Work with senior discipline colleagues to improve project delivery performance, address distressed projects and apply lessons learned across the wider Buildings division.
• Partner with other NDDs to drive collaboration, work sharing and consistent technical leadership across the different UK business lines and disciplines, ensuring Buildings can mobilise as one division to support major projects.
• Represent Buildings in relevant UK&I Quality forums, ensuring specialist discipline perspectives, risks, standards and lessons learned are properly captured and communicated.
• Compile, review and update a yearly technical excellence plan for the Buildings BC, ensuring each specialist discipline has clear priorities, measurable actions, accountable owners and a defined approach for staff education, implementation and major project delivery support.
• Lead regular discipline leadership forums with Discipline Leaders to review business plan progress, capability, succession, quality, innovation, growth, cross-region collaboration, implementation progress and the effectiveness of staff education activity.
• Hold Discipline Leaders accountable for ensuring agreed strategic priorities are followed through, adopted by teams and supported by appropriate guidance, training, knowledge-sharing and lessons learned.

Business Development and Collaboration:

• Prepare the BC Business Plan section for all specialist disciplines within Buildings, with clear input, ownership and accountability from the relevant Discipline Leaders.
• Responsible for implementing the growth aspects of the Business Plan across all Buildings specialist disciplines, tracking progress and driving a performance culture through the discipline leadership community.
• Lead or support major pursuits and strategic initiatives that require integrated input from multiple specialist disciplines.
• Engage with the Regional Business Leader, BCOL/BCPL and other NDDs in promoting collaboration across Buildings, with a focus on cross-selling, major project mobilisation and consistently winning new work with clients nationally.
• Work with the Sector Strategy Director and the Marketing team to develop content for the discipline and participate in thought leadership development.
• Collaborate with Discipline Leaders and BCPLs to ensure appropriate capability, capacity and specialist expertise are embedded across the Buildings BC.
• Collaborate with Discipline Leaders and BCPLs to identify and convert cross-sector opportunities with clients, bringing the right specialist disciplines together at the right time.
• Align and input into strategic bids to support major project pursuits.

People Leadership:

• Develop, attract, engage and retain talent across the specialist disciplines, supporting low voluntary turnover and strong succession pipelines.
• Provide senior technical leadership and mentoring through the relevant Discipline Leaders, ensuring colleagues have access to the right technical guidance and support.
• Ensure team members have the right experience, knowledge and support for the work they are assigned, with clear accountability for the quality and completeness of their outputs.
• Maintain strong employee connection to leadership through regular communication, visibility and engagement across the specialist discipline communities.
• Partner with the RBL, BCOL and BCPLs to communicate the Buildings vision, discipline strategy, technical excellence priorities and progress against agreed action plans.
• Responsible, in collaboration with the BCOL/BCPL and senior regional Discipline colleagues, for recruiting talent to the BC whilst ensuring appropriate staff mix with line of sight to current and future talent needs.
• Responsible, in association with the BCOL/BCPL and senior regional Discipline colleagues, for maintaining the correct staffing level based on current and future workloads.
• Work with Discipline Leaders to ensure regional teams are accountable for quality, minimise rework, apply appropriate checks and maintain a right-first-time culture across the Buildings division.
• Collaborate with the BCOL, for the overall talent management lifecycle including career development, employee engagement, succession planning, coaching and mentoring, diversity and inclusion, and leadership development for the BC.
• Collaborate with RBL, BCOL, BCPL, for managing performance and compensation within the Discipline, in accordance with Stantec’s compensation philosophy, through yearly employee performance reviews, rate reviews, and STIP/bonus -allocation for the BC.
• Ensure compliance with applicable employment legislation and Stantec’s people practices and policies by partnering with Human Resources.
• Direct reports may include regional Team Leads and Directors as appropriate

Health and Safety:

• Support the BCOL in promoting health, safety, security and environment culture across the specialist disciplines, including monitoring leading and lagging indicators and executing the BC Improvement Plan.
• Support the Regional Business Leader with regionally focused and business-line focused HSSE processes, communications and improvement activity.

Provide broad leadership influence:

• Act as a trusted senior leader, thought partner and source of counsel for the Buildings BC and UK&I region.
• Identify and implement opportunities to strengthen Stantec’s high-performance culture, with a focus on talent, productivity, technical excellence, project delivery and financial performance.
• Foster a success-oriented, accountable and collaborative environment across the specialist disciplines and wider Buildings BC.
• Uphold a corporate culture that promotes ethical practices, encourages individual integrity, and focuses on the client and service delivery
• Support the RBL, BCOL and BCPLs in diagnosing and resolving operational issues that affect discipline performance, collaboration, quality or delivery across the Buildings BC.
• Build, with the support of the Discipline Leads, connected and collaborative technical communities across geographies that reduce regional silos, improve consistency, share lessons learned and strengthen the collective Buildings offer to clients, particularly on major and complex projects.

Support Functions:

Practice:

• Provide support where appropriate for compliance with the ISO-certified Integrated Management System and Project Management (PM) Framework.
• Support the BCOL in ensuring resource management is responsive to workload, major project needs, utilisation targets and backlog requirements.
• Support the BCOL and PMCLs in improving project delivery performance, including recovery activity on distressed projects and consistent adoption of lessons learned.

Client Focus:

• Where appropriate, be a key team member or lead account manager for major clients.
• Support Account Managers to plan and implement client development activities to grow the business.
• Contribute to win strategies, major pursuit planning and successful project execution by bringing the right specialist discipline input into the client proposition.
• Assist as needed on projects where issues impacting client satisfaction or project management best practices require escalation.
• Promote the use of Pipeline to optimise business development plans.

Business Development and Collaboration:

• Support the Regional Business Leader, BCOL/BCPL and other NDDs in providing information on Discipline related trends, market intelligence, competitor intelligence, market pricing and compensation rates as necessary.
• Participate in risk reviews as necessary.
• Support the Regional Business Leader, BCOL/BCPL and other NDDs with enhancing Stantec’s marketplace reputation through:
  • the development and maintenance of a cohesive Stantec brand;
  • key client and account development and maintenance; market and community outreach and engagement;
  • maintaining and enhancing relationships with clients, universities, local economic development agencies, etc.

Utilisation Target:

• The NDD is expected to have a utilisation target of between 40% and 60%, reflecting the balance between chargeable work, leadership, strategy, technical excellence and business development responsibilities.

This description is not a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that may be required of the employee and other duties, responsibilities and activities may be assigned or may be changed at any time with or without notice.