Associate Director of Infrastructure: PFI & Contracting

Bring your commercial expertise somewhere it really matters. If your career has been built around complex contracts, outsourced services, infrastructure, FM, PFI/PPP or major commercial partnerships, you may not automatically think of the NHS as your next move. We think you should.

Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust is looking for a senior commercial leader to take responsibility for one of the most strategically important contractual portfolios within our Infrastructure Division. This is not simply a contract-management role and we are not looking exclusively for an NHS career history. We want someone with the commercial judgement, confidence and strategic perspective to represent a major organisation effectively in sophisticated, long-term contractual relationships.

The commercial challenge: Our principal PFI arrangement covers Pinderfields and Pontefract Hospitals and operates through a 35-year concession running to 2042. The contractual structure involves Consort Healthcare (Mid Yorkshire) Ltd as the SPV, with hard FM services currently delivered through Equans. With around 16 years of the concession remaining, this is an important point in its lifecycle. The Trust is strengthening its commercial grip, bringing PFI and remedial activity more closely together and elevating leadership of this portfolio within its senior Infrastructure structure. We want to ensure we have the capability, relationships and commercial disciplines needed not only to manage today's contract effectively, but to prepare properly for its later stages and eventual handback.

Where you come in: As Associate Director of Infrastructure: PFI & Contracting, you will be the Trust's senior commercial lead for PFI and complex infrastructure contracts. You will provide strategic leadership across contract performance, financial oversight, lifecycle and maintenance programmes, variations, risk, governance and future planning. You will advise senior leadership and the Board and act as a principal interface with the SPV, service providers and other commercial partners. But this role is about more than contractual expertise. We need someone capable of knowing when to challenge, when to negotiate and when a collaborative solution delivers the strongest long-term outcome. The most effective commercial relationships are rarely purely adversarial. You will be expected to build mature partnerships based on clarity, evidence and trust, while ensuring that the Trust understands its position and that its partners are properly held to account. That balance will be central to your success.

You don't need to have built your career in the NHS. You may currently work for an FM or infrastructure provider, an SPV or project company, a commercial or infrastructure consultancy, another public-sector organisation, or in a business managing substantial long-term outsourced contracts. PFI or PPP experience would clearly be valuable, but we are equally interested in candidates who can demonstrate sophisticated commercial judgement in other complex contractual environments. What matters is the substance of your experience. We want to understand the contracts you have personally led, the commercial decisions you have taken, the difficult relationships you have navigated and the outcomes you have delivered. You will need to be comfortable operating with senior executives and commercial counterparties, bringing together competing positions and translating complex contractual issues into clear strategic decisions.

You are likely to bring:

• substantial commercial and contractual leadership experience;
• experience of complex, long-term contracts or outsourced service relationships;
• strong negotiation and influencing capability;
• advanced financial and commercial acumen;
• the confidence to operate at senior and Board level;
• experience of managing commercial risk and contract performance;
• the ability to combine robust challenge with effective partnership working;
• experience of developing teams and strengthening organisational capability.

Why move into the NHS? Because the commercial decisions made here have a very tangible outcome. Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust employs more than 10,000 people and provides acute and community healthcare services to more than half a million people across Wakefield and North Kirklees. Its Infrastructure Division comprises around 1,500 colleagues across Estates, Facilities, Capital Projects, Property, Sustainability, PFI Management and Medical Devices. Good commercial management here means more than improving a balance sheet. It influences the quality and resilience of hospital environments, the value achieved from major long-term contracts and ultimately the conditions in which thousands of colleagues care for patients every day. The Trust's values are Caring, Improving, Respect and High Standards. For this appointment, those values sit comfortably alongside commercial discipline. We are looking for someone who can combine integrity and public-service purpose with the confidence to protect the Trust's commercial interests.

The opportunity: For the right person, this is the chance to move beyond managing somebody else's commercial proposition and become the intelligent client. You will have the opportunity to influence strategy, strengthen commercial capability, shape the development of the PFI and remedial function and establish how an important portfolio is managed for the years ahead. If you are a commercially astute senior leader who enjoys complexity, negotiation, partnership and the opportunity to make a visible organisational impact, we would like to hear from you.

Closing date: Monday 21 September 2026

Final interviews: circa 1 October 2026

To apply, please submit your CV and covering letter to: Jonathan Phillips

Please use the subject line “Mid Yorks AD of Infrastructure application”