Job description

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Allen & York are proud to be partnering with Kier - one of the UK's leading contractors - as they look to recruit a Sustainability Director for their Construction & Engineering Division to lead, inspire, influence and deliver the sustainability strategy and ensure that sustainability becomes business as usual.

Reporting into the MD for Construction and Engineering, you will work across seven business units and be responsible for leading three managers who sit in the construction engineering division and are responsible for environment, social and carbon. In addition to this, there are then local teams of environmental and social specialists, totalling close to fifty, who sit in the Regional Business Units and will have a dotted line into you, so your influence will stretch from the SLT right down to the managers on the ground. You will be a member of the Senior Leadership Team so you'll be comfortable engaging with other Executives/Directors, along with team members at various levels. Given this matrix structure, it will be advantageous if you've experience of having worked in a similar environment and for you to have strong stakeholder management skills.

This is a national role, so you'll have the gravitas and credibility from a sustainability perspective - and preferably prior experience of working in such a capacity - to understand how to implement different elements of the strategy and understand the different challenges faced at varying levels, and be able to suggest solutions to these issues.

The business has set some ambitious targets around net zero, eliminating waste and becoming single-use plastic free and it will be your responsibility to ensure the Team and operations are in place to achieve these objectives. Depending on when the suitable candidate joins the business, you may be able to get involved with leading the internal review of the plan (the construction wide strategy is cascaded across the seven business units and each of the seven business units has a ten-point plan to respond to the strategy), proposing targets and agreeing these with Group.

You will require strong technical experience of both environmental sustainability and social value and you'll know how to develop regional plans to achieve the targets. It will also be your responsibility to keep abreast of market trends, attend events and conferences and contribute to thought leadership. In addition, it's expected that you'll be an advocate for inclusion and diversity and to help incorporate this into everything you and the Team do.
Your personality traits are going to be as important as your technical credentials, given the broad remit of your role and the need to foster a culture of teamwork and collaboration, in particular between the environmental and social managers as the disciplines overlap considerably.

Despite this role sitting in the construction sector, we're open to reviewing profiles from candidates working in related sectors, although experience of construction would be advantageous.

As this is a national role, location can be relatively flexible, however the Group is in London so you need to be easily accessible to the Capital for face-to-face meetings and you will be required to travel as and when is necessary.

This is a complex role, where you will wear many hats and be influencing numerous stakeholders, at all levels, so as you can imagine, a competitive salary and attractive benefits package is on offer to the right candidate so if you'd like to find out more, please contact Katie on kpereira@allen-york.com for a confidential conversation.

About us:

Allen & York have been matching purposeful people with purpose-led organisations for 30 years. We partner with our clients and candidates on roles that build an understanding of climate change, promote sustainability and create inclusive and responsible organisations, working towards a sustainable world for us all. Committed to inclusiveness in the workplace, we aim to increase diversity across all areas and therefore welcome applications from all qualified candidates, regardless of their ethnicity, race, gender, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, age, or whether or not they have a disability. Let's help build a better world, together.