Senior Cost Manager

About VIRTUS

VIRTUS Data Centres is the UK’s fastest growing data centre provider which owns, designs, builds and operates the country’s most efficient and flexible data centres.

In May 2023 we announced our plans to expand into continental Europe, with our first data centre due to open in Berlin in 2026, to be quickly followed by two full campuses and expansion into other countries in the pipeline.

Our purpose is to serve humanity by being an active, positive participant in the 4th industrial revolution. When we talk about our purpose, we refer to our customers’ customers; the child playing a computer game, the person watching their favourite movie, booking a medical appointment, a plane ticket, a hotel or doing their online banking; those things can’t be done if we don’t do our job.

Our mission is to consistently exceed the expectations of customers through innovative, high-quality solutions and services. We employ intelligent thinkers – people with positive attitudes, who add to the quality of our customer proposition and business.

We value individual endeavour and initiative and encourage teamwork and togetherness because collective experience and expertise is VIRTUS’ greatest strength.

Job Summary

VIRTUS are seeking a Senior Cost Manager to support developing and providing programmatic cost management services across all projects and EMEA regions, reporting directly to the Vice President Procurement.

The Cost Management function ensures competitiveness and continuous improvements for our EMEA-wide investment/ construction projects by setting up a benchmark database, running benchmarks for current and new projects, defining cost estimates, reviewing project budgets from an early stage of projects including Due Diligence, and monitoring & steering our investment projects from a financial standpoint.

The position holder will be part of a small team of internal staff as well as external, project-specific external cost consultants and cost estimators spanning across all EMEA regions.

Each of the countries across EMEA are single or multi-campus regions with active construction projects and new projects and campuses within the site selection phase.

The project-related cost managers will have peer construction project managers accountable for their prescribed projects to ensure alignment and clear accountability.

Duties and Responsibilities

1. Assume ownership across VIRTUS of respective cost management activities for new build projects from site selection/business development to completion/hand-over, as well as major in-life investment projects (extensions, replacements).
2. Monitor investment projects financially and ensure budget compliance.
3. Review project costs and challenge against best-in-class reference benchmarks.
4. Manage EMEA-wide investment projects commercially.
5. Run monthly cost review meetings, generate monthly cost reports and review variations and budget requests.
6. Closely work together cross-functionally with our Business Development team and the Design & Build teams.
7. Collaborate and align closely with the internal and external EMEA cost management team (mainly based in UK and GE).

Qualifications/Person Specification

The ideal candidate should have demonstrated the following competencies:

1. Proven experience in developing and managing a cost management role (ideally in a data center/construction environment).
2. Strong commercial awareness with over 10 years of experience in a QS or Cost Management function.
3. Professionally recognized (e.g. RICS).
4. (Hyperscale) Data Centre experience.
5. Experience in a programmatic role managing multiple concurrent projects.
6. Having demonstrated progressive responsibility and growth within the industry.
7. Experience working within the prescribed regions (UK, GE, IT).
8. Excellent cross-functional collaboration across multiple countries.
9. Multi-lingual – English and German (preferred).
10. Strong presentation skills in addition to analytical, financial and numeracy skills.
11. Project experience from early Due Diligence (estimating, benchmarking), through design stages, value engineering, procurement, construction through to final account and lessons learnt.
12. Attention to detail, supporting and driving standardization and improvement of processes.
13. Experience in developing and managing budgets.
14. Ability to cope with tight deadlines and to prioritize workloads.

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