Engineering Manager in Colchester

The role is responsible for leading and managing the engineering team to ensure that all engineering responsibilities are delivered efficiently, within the appropriate cost levels, and in line with project deadlines.

The position promotes a strong collaborative culture across estimating, commercial, and operations teams, recognising that flexibility and cross-functional support are essential to successfully deliver work.

The role includes responsibility for recruiting, managing, training and developing staff.

This includes overseeing annual performance reviews and maintaining or evolving the existing 6-month graduate training programme through regular monthly reviews.

The postholder will maintain positive team discipline and implement performance improvement measures where required, while ensuring the team remains up to date with regulatory changes and emerging technologies.

The role also provides engineering support to site teams by resolving technical issues and developing practical solutions, holds financial accountability for the team, and contributes to the ongoing development of the engineering team’s roles and responsibilities, in line with the company’s growth.

Job Role

• The JA Brooks business has both a UK and Gm BH element – and is involved with prefabrication at its own facilities in Colchester where there is a 5–6-man CAD / BIM team and has its main office in London.
• Its main areas of work are data centres in Europe and the UK, and commercial M&E works in the UK, mainly, but not solely in London.
• The Technical Services Engineering Manager (TSEM) will manage the engineering team (ET) which is predominately office based and includes members in the UK and Europe (currently Germany and Denmark).

This will include control of the BIM team, based in Colchester.

• The TSEM will be responsible for developing the existing team and assist in recruiting new staff as required.

The business places a big emphasis on recruiting young graduates and technician engineers, as well as more experienced engineers at both intermediate and senior level.

• The candidate must be able to demonstrate a strong team-building ethos, a good degree of empathy towards the younger members of the team and a willingness to spend time mentoring and helping in their development.
• They must bring with them a broad wealth of knowledge of M&E services and systems in the commercial, healthcare and fit out arenas.

It is essential that this includes data centre experience as this is a significant part of the business.

• The successful candidate will need a strong ability to understand and assess risk, as a key responsibility of the engineering team is the evaluation of tenders as they are received.

Working closely with the pre-construction team, the role involves identifying potential design issues, typically within projects progressing from stage 3/4 through to stage 5.

• The candidate must have a solid understanding of the design process to ensure that the information provided during the tendering stage accurately reflects the relevant design stage.

As part of the tender adjudication process, the role also requires the preparation of a detailed engineering report to support directors in assessing project risks prior to submission.

• Capable of analysing engineering issues and formulating sensible solutions, through the team, which will need to include the ability to produce fully costed /detailed reports.
• It is a given that the candidate is able to communicate at all levels, both internally and externally, and able to work under pressure while remaining calm and professional at all times.
• Through the team, the TSEM will be responsible for managing / supervising and checking the work done by external design consultants.
• The candidate will need to demonstrate a genuine interest in the industry, its people and be capable of keeping the team motivated.
• This will be a senior appointment, and the candidate will be expected to help the business grow and to extend existing and new client relationships.

With agreement of the Directors, the candidate will have a degree of autonomy to develop the team and its scope.

Key Roles and Responsibilities

• Communicating and Influencing
• The role will report to the Operations Director / Board Directors but will also interface with the wider project team/structure within JAB and be able to develop good working relationships in all areas.
• The Technical Services Engineering Manager will help with the engagement and liaison with the client and members of the professional team.
• All methods of communications are to be utilised but will typically be verbal and written communications.
• The TSEM will have responsibility for the work done by the team and for the successful delivery of the project from an engineering perspective within the projects.
• They will be expected to maintain a log of financial issues arising from the estimating process (but purely as a means of improving estimating and giving lessons learnt) and be able to demonstrate savings (and any losses) created by the engineering team.
• People Responsibility
• Be able to help in the development of other members of the team, and staff not directly in the team but who may need a point of reference / experience to go too.

Specific SHEQ accountabilities

• Responsible, in conjunction with other members of the project team, for compliance with all aspects of Health, Safety and Environmental policies and legislation.

This will need to include significant CDM experience to be able to fully interrogate designs and to check the work of the rest of the team.

Knowledge, qualifications, skills, and behaviours

Knowledge

• Relevant experience as needed for the role: Significant current experience with a good understanding of commercial, pre-construction, construction and commissioning and handover activities within building services – which will need to include data centres.

Qualifications

• Appropriate level of Engineering based qualifications
• Registered with the engineering council.
• Membership of a relevant Institute – preferably CIBSE and ideally at Chartered level
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