Senior Director, Highways & Roads

at  WSP

THE OPPORTUNITY:

Senior Director, Highways & Roads – Bridges Highways & Roads Ontario for our Transportation business line.
This position provides leadership and strategic direction for the Highways & Roads division across Ontario. Reporting to the Vice President Bridges Highways & Roads, the Senior Director is responsible for over 70 technical staff and revenues in excess of $16 million CAD .
The role is primarily responsible for people leadership, financial performance, project delivery, organic growth, client services, safety, and staff performance management for the Highways & Roads division across Ontario. This role ensures the coordination of efforts across offices and other business lines, developing plans, programs, and organizational objectives to enhance margins, workforce utilization, and cash generation, enabling the growth of the business and ensuring client satisfaction. This role also capitalizes on the common resources of both the Highways & Roads team to deliver these objectives. All activities are undertaken in support of the WSP Canada strategic plan.

• Accountability and responsibility for the overall performance of the Highways & Roads division in Ontario, including meeting established revenue and profitability targets.
• Provides effective leadership by inspiring and engaging all managers, project managers, and professional/specialist individual contributor employees towards achieving the short-term and long-term objectives of the business line, as reflected in the WSP Canada strategic plan, business line’s strategic plan, and the division’s operating plan and targets
• Manages the implementation of the operating plan and its objectives for the Highways & Roads division in Ontario, with primary efforts focused on project delivery excellence, financial performance, and adherence to the business line’s strategic plan and organic growth;
• Works and collaborates with Managers as part of the Discipline management team, to establish discipline-specific strategies, budgets, goals, and objectives consistent with, and supportive of, broader Business Line and Corporate strategies.
• Senior responsibility for managing and developing employees in accordance with WSP core values, the performance management program and the job architecture and job family structure, including supporting the identification and retention of, and investment in, top talent;
• Provides leadership to sustain a culture of continuous improvement and client satisfaction.
• Upholds the company’s core values and maintain Health and Safety at the highest level.
• Senior responsibility for optimizing the performance of the Highways & Roads division in Ontario, including, project margin, staff utilization, DSO, and general administration costs;
• Defines contracting strategies, commercial terms, and measures to manage and mitigate risk during key pursuit processes including interacting directly with customers during negotiations;
• With support from the corporate legal team, provides guidance and direction to managers to ensure operational and project delivery excellence;
• Conducts regular project reviews to ensure budget, schedule, risk, and cost to complete estimates are in order;
• Guides and directs project management employees on measures to mitigate project performance issues and risks, ensuring successful delivery on the contractual commitments and financial targets for the project portfolio to meet client expectations and achieve or exceed profitability targets for the business line;
• Collaborates closely with the finance, quality, legal/risk, and project delivery shared services to advance project management tools such as project status reports, ensuring the design meets business line requirements and proper deployment and utilization within the business line;
• Collaborates with peers nationally and in other regions to leverage and implement project delivery and other best practices;
• Promotes collaboration within the business line and across offices to ensure effective resource sharing, workload/resource balancing and to bring the best the business line has to bear to meet the needs of clients;
• Monitors business development investments to deliver acceptable returns on the investments, aligned with the business line strategy and its backlog and sales targets;
• Other duties as assigned/required.