Senior/Principal Consultant - Project Sponsor in Leeds

Turner & Townsend is a global professional services company with over 22,000 people in more than 60 countries. Working with our clients across real estate, infrastructure, energy and natural resources, we transform together delivering outcomes that improve people's lives.

Our Programme Advisory team specialises in the strategy, set-up and transformation of major programmes and asset owning enterprises within the transport, defence, utilities, and power sectors in the UK and internationally. Since forming in 2018, our growing team of experts have brought innovative thinking to some of the world's most complex infrastructure challenges - delivering tangible outcomes for clients by bringing the best of our technical excellence and transformational change capability.

We are looking for enthusiastic, talented, and proactive individuals to join our team within Programme Advisory. Our growing Programme Set Up team needs people with hands-on experience working as Project, Programme or Portfolio sponsors. We work across the entire development lifecycle providing a range of services to our client and are looking for people with experience establishing strategic direction and accountability for the successful set up and development of major projects, programmes and portfolios.

As part of the team your key responsibilities will include:

• Occupying client or service roles involving Sponsorship and/or Strategic Requirements
• Managing client relationships
• Identifying and realising business development opportunities
• Leading or contributing towards the preparation of bid proposals or managing key bids
• Leading internal initiatives within the Programme Advisory team, such as the development of programme integration products and methodologies.

Your skillset should include:

• Strategic Leadership: Define and champion the vision, objectives and success criteria for projects, programmes or portfolios, providing guidance and ensuring alignment with organisational priorities, strategic objectives and investment outcomes.
• Stakeholder Management: Build and maintain effective relationships with a wide range of stakeholders across complex internal and external landscapes.
• Funding and Business Case Ownership: Support clients to secure project funding, develop and oversee business cases including navigating approvals, ensure investment decisions remain aligned to strategic objectives and agreed benefits are realised while maximising value for money.
• Scope and Requirements Definition: Translate strategic, client and business needs into clearly defined scope and requirements and hold delivery teams accountable for delivering agreed outputs within cost and schedule tolerances.
• Regulation and Compliance: Lead governance, assurance and compliance in adherence to relevant industry legislation, financial and commercial frameworks, company policies, standards and processes.
• Risk and Change Oversight: Provide direction on major risks, issues and change management, ensuring controlled and informed mitigations and corrective actions are implemented.
• Identify and Deliver Efficiencies: Provide innovative approaches and engagement techniques which challenge the status quo and enable teams to underpin affordability challenges and deliver cost and schedule efficiencies at project, programme and or organisational levels.
• Leadership and Sponsorship Culture: Provide a clear vision and direction, building a high-performing team and promoting collaboration and delivery excellence across teams.

Qualifications:

• Experience in a sponsorship role for large-scale infrastructure or capital delivery project, programme or portfolio or as part of a transformative organisation in complex, multi-stakeholder environments.
• Degree level education, membership of a relevant professional body, or equivalent professional experience.
• Extensive knowledge of the stages of the project lifecycle, including business case development and mapping benefits and outcomes to define project requirements.
• Experience navigating planning, regulatory, political and environmental constraints.
• Strong commercial acumen with experience in investment planning, contractual and commercial negotiations and ownership of financial status.
• Experience managing risks, schedule, funding, resources and delivery performance, while balancing conflicting priorities.
• Excellent political, networking and advocacy skills with experience of networking, influencing and challenging at a senior level across a range of both internal and external stakeholders.
• Proven leadership capability with experience leading successful, multidisciplinary teams.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to communicate complex information and engage a diversity of audiences.
• Strong problem-solving and decision-making skills.
• Passionate about putting customers, communities, and stakeholders first.
• Experience in driving innovation, building resilience in teams and empowering change.

We provide a great place to work, where each person has the opportunity and voice to affect change. We want our people to succeed both in work and life. To support this we promote a healthy, productive and flexible working environment that respects work-life balance. Turner & Townsend is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees and actively encourage applications from all sectors of the community.