Senior Legal Counsel/Legal Director in Birmingham

About Mitie

Mitie is the UK's leading facilities management and professional services company. We manage and maintain some of the nation's most recognised landmarks and work with a wide range of blue-chip private and public sector clients. Our expertise, care, technology, insight and focus on sustainability create amazing work environments, helping our customers to be exceptional, every day.

Better places, thriving communities.

Mitie is the UK's leading facilities management and professional services company. We manage and maintain some of the nation's most recognised landmarks and work with a wide range of blue-chip private and public sector clients. Our expertise, care, technology, insight and focus on sustainability create amazing work environments, helping our customers to be exceptional, every day.

The Mitie Projects Division delivers transformational projects for Mitie's FM clients and others, in the fields of e.g. data centre construction and fit out, design and build projects, mechanical and electrical critical infrastructure projects, design commissions, fabric services, fire protection, M&E, solar PV, and high voltage and electrical works (among others). See here Engineering Project Management | Turnkey Solutions | Mitie for more details of the breadth and variety of the Mitie Projects businesses.

Why Join Us?

• Exceptional Environments: Help us ensure that critical national infrastructure runs efficiently and safely, allowing our customers to provide exceptional services.
• Dynamic Work Culture: Be part of a team that values integrity, trust, diversity, and going the extra mile.

Delivering the Exceptional, Every Day

• Our purpose: our expertise, care, technology and insight create amazing work environments, helping our customers be exceptional every day.
• Our promise to our people: a place to work where you can thrive and be your best every day.
• Our promise to our customers: a trusted partner creating exceptional environments for your customers and people, adding value every day.
• Our culture – our core values and how we behave:
• We are one Mitie: we work as one to deliver a seamless, unrivalled service. We are all in it together, if we can help a customer or colleague in any way, we will. We are one Mitie.
• We are built on integrity and trust: integrity and trust are at the heart of all we do. We are the face of company. We treat others as we would like to be treated. We are proud to work for Mitie.
• We go the extra mile: whether it's keeping things running smoothly in a safe environment, looking for new ways to do things better or fixing problems, going the extra mile for our colleagues and customers and keeping our promises is in our DNA.
• Our diversity makes us stronger: we are very proud of our rich and diverse culture and backgrounds. Our diversity creates ideas and insights. Everyone at Mitie has a voice and is treated as an equal.
• Our customers' business, is our business: we are a partner, trusted for our expertise and for putting our customers at the heart of everything we do.

The Role

We are looking for an experienced Senior Lawyer to provide high quality specialist expertise and guidance in complex and dynamic situations as well as providing commercially/construction focussed legal advice to Mitie to facilitate enable the achievement of its objectives. Reporting to the Group Legal Director, the successful candidate will be responsible for identifying and delivering sound, pragmatic solutions to complex and rapidly changing situations. A clear commercial approach, enthusiasm and a flexible and questioning attitude are the key requirements - as well as strong commercial contract negotiation experience.

Key Responsibilities

• Supporting Mitie's Power & Grid business units with the reviewing, amending and drafting of a variety of bespoke, amended and standard form construction and engineering contracts, including FIDIC, NEC, IChemE amd MF/1 suites of contract.
• Acting as the lead legal adviser for major energy infrastructure projects, including high voltage substations, transmission and distribution networks, battery energy storage systems (BESS), renewable energy developments, grid connection projects and private network infrastructure
• Proactively engaging with the estimating, sales and operational teams on various aspects of the bidding and delivery aspects of projects contracting including gauging the risk profile of projects and supporting internal governance approvals
• To provide transactional support, including supporting bid strategy, identifying contract risk allocation, negotiating and finalising supplier and customer contracts recoginising the key concerns of the business
• To provide swift support on other legal and commercial issues as they arise such as termination of contracts, payment issues and other formal and informal dispute related matters, working closely with, finance, commercial and operations directors within the business and taking the lead on legal decisions concerning those matters
• Drafting correspondence in the early stages of a dispute, assessing and collating evidence, assessing risks and discussing strategy with relevant business divisions as well as updating the business in relation to the material disputes and the risks they pose
• Engage, promote and support the delivery of standards, processes and best practice across Power & Grid business units, including by leading in the development and rollout of legal training exercises
• Work collaboratively with other members of the Projects legal team in the development and flow down of strategy and policies
• To assist with the development and maintenance of a reliable, and comprehensive precedent bank to enable standard documents to be prepared, adapted and produced as quickly as needed and updating of contracts database
• To build and maintain strong relationships within all areas of Mitie in order to provide timely and commercial legal support
• Instructing and managing external legal advisers ensuring advice received is concise, constructive and commercially appropriate

Person Specification

Essential

• Professional qualification as a Solicitor
• Track record of expertise in infrastructure projects and construction law, including familiarity with standard form construction contracts such as NEC and/or FIDIC, or other experience in drafting, negotiating and advising on complex commercial contracts.
• Experience of projects/construction work within the renewable energy industry including installation, connection, balance of plant and O&M projects is desirable but a willingness to develop deep knowledge in this sector and of the other stakeholders in the industry that impact projects is essential
• Demonstrates technical excellence, commercial awareness and a commitment to excellence in client service with a pragmatic approach and the ability to give concise legal advice
• Effective communication and influencing skills, including the ability to advise up to executive director level in written and verbal formats in a constructive and concise manner
• Experience in leading the legal aspects of projects and a proven track record in providing solution focussed advice and great client care
• Ability to multi task, work well under pressure and ability to use own initiative
• Ability to use Microsoft Office suite, Sharepoint and adapatability to using new systems.

Desirable

• Experience of a fast paced in house legal function
• Experience of instructing/managing external legal services providers

Location

We would prefer candidates based within a comutable distance of Birmingham, Glasgow, London, or Manchester (or within occasional commute of these cities). If based outside of London, travel to London will be required on a periodic basis. Travel within the UK will be required to attend negotiations/meet key stakeholders. Flexible working arrangements will be available to the successful candidate.

What is in it for you?

• A competitive salary.
• Access to a supportive team of highly-experienced construction and projects lawyers, to support your transition into the team and your career development.
• Hands-on experience and a high level of autonomy in a dynamic work environment, to take your development to the next level.
• High-quality work and the potential to be involved in significant, high-profile transactions.
• Access to learning, growth and development opportunities, including the potential to be supported in further education opportunities in the future.
• The chance to be part of Mitie's continued growth story, and to access the career opportunities that creates.

Note

This job description Is intended to give applicants an appreciation of the role envisaged for this position and the range of duties undertaken. Specific tasks and objectives will be agreed with the successful applicant throughout the period of employment. The job description may be varied from time to time by the Company to reflect changes in the role and/or the needs of the business.

Our market-leading offering provides you with benefits that suit your lifestyle.

We have a virtual GP on hand for you and members of your household. So you can get expert advice by video or phone without having to leave your home. We offer financial wellbeing assistance through our Salary Finance scheme. For example, you could access 50% of your earned pay before payday for a small fee. Salary Finance also offers competitive loans.

When you join us, we’ll give you a link to our flexible lifestyle benefits platform, Choices. You might choose to purchase up to five extra days’ holiday each year. You might buy critical illness insurance, seek dental treatment or buy technology products at an affordable cost. There are many choices!

We give you access to high street discounts from thousands of well-known retailers, gyms and more through our MiDeals platform. And we have a cycle-to-work scheme. Life cover of up to four times your salary is available. We also offer enhanced pension contributions, a save-as-you-earn scheme, and a Mitie Matching Share Plan (you could even be awarded free shares in Mitie).

We award our employees with Mitie Stars as recognition for their hard work. There are cash prizes up for grabs each month and at the end of the year there’s a chance to scoop a top prize of £10,000!

Our success is a direct result of the experience and quality of our people. Progressing your career is therefore a top priority for us. We offer a diverse variety of training and development avenues via a wide selection of learning resources to suit you.

We are committed to ensuring our recruitment process is inclusive and accessible to all. If you have a disability or long-term condition (for example dyslexia, anxiety, autism, a mobility condition or hearing loss) and need us to make any reasonable adjustments, changes or do anything differently during the recruitment process, please let us know by emailing Karen Hayes at Karen.hayes@mitie.com.

Since 1987, Mitie’s 84,000 employees have been maintaining companies globally. We are the UK’s leading facilities management and professional services company, and our clients range from household names in banking, critical government sites as well as hospitals and schools.

Join our Mitie Team.

Together our diversity makes us stronger.

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