Head of Design – Overhead Lines

Company: Balfour Beatty plc
Apply for the Head of Design – Overhead Lines
Location: East Midlands
Job Description:

Balfour Beatty have an exciting new opportunity for a Head of Design – Overhead Lines to lead the Development and Design capability of our OHL Team in our Power T&D Business.

Role Purpose

  • Own the Design Delivery process for the discipline in accordance with Group Minimum Engineering Expectations (GMEE) requirements.
  • Own the OHL / Structures input to our forward workload and work‑winning activities, ensuring tender commitments are achievable and robust for the discipline, supporting our work‑winning teams by providing robust and clear tender information.
  • Set strategic direction for the design discipline, focusing on growing our capability, enhancing the delivery of our on‑site projects, and developing key tools and methods to drive our productivity through standardisation, automation and digital methods.
  • Accountable for the discipline financial targets.

Key Accountabilities

  • Resource all live projects with suitably skilled staff to deliver to our commitments of time, cost and quality having overall accountability for the delivery of design.
  • Continue to evolve our Global Practice approach to integration with our GCC teams to focus on the medium and longer term capacity of the team.
  • Own the OHL / Structures input to our forward workload and work‑winning activities, ensuring tender commitments are achievable and robust for their discipline, supporting our work‑winning teams by providing robust and clear tender information.
  • Maintain a robust talent pipeline and succession planning to achieve our commitments in both transmission and distribution.
  • Ensure the competence and capacity of any outsourced design.
  • Set strategic direction for the design discipline, focusing on growing our capability, enhancing the delivery of our on‑site projects, and developing key tools and methods to drive our productivity through standardisation, automation and digital methods.
  • Alignment with our Engineering Management and Chief Engineer functions in Design & Engineering, as well as building our relationships with our Preconstruction, Planning and Operations teams.
  • Own the Design Delivery process for the discipline in accordance with Group Minimum Engineering Expectations (GMEE) requirements.
  • Maintain excellent working relationships with our in‑house fabrication business.
  • Accountable for the discipline financial targets.

Key Responsibilities

  • Be a member of the Design and Engineering Senior Leadership Team.
  • Provide suitably qualified Design resource to projects.
  • Ensure adequate pipeline of internally and externally qualified designers to meet the projected business demand.
  • Ownership of the Power T&D design delivery process for the discipline, including but not limited to:
  • Audit preparation and support.
  • Closing actions arising from any internal or external audit or process development.
  • Process improvement.
  • Monitoring of process adherence.
  • Provide site support to the projects during assembly and construction phase of the project.
  • Support troubleshooting for issues within discipline.
  • Provide management and leadership to the Design Capability for the discipline.
  • Ensure that design team provides robust and optimal designs and documentation for each individual project.
  • Promote a proactive team culture which ensures shared learning and best practice, good communication, work across boundaries and recognition of success.
  • Actively promote and demonstrate Group values and behaviours through day‑to‑day work.
  • Ensure adherence to Governance processes and the Gated lifecycle.

Skills Required

  • Degree or equivalent in Civil, Electrical or Power Engineering disciplines.
  • Ideally a corporate member of, or working towards corporate membership of, an Engineering Institution (e.g. ICE, IEEE, IMechE).
  • Previous experience in the Power industry, coupled with familiarity with NG, SSE and DNO technical specifications.
  • Possess excellent interpersonal and communication skills, being able to relate to people at all levels in an organisation and to establish and maintain respect both professionally and personally.

Benefits

  • Smart working, giving you more flexibility such as staggered start and finish times, with up to 40% remote working, where roles allow.
  • 25 days paid annual leave (pro rata)
  • Family friendly policies which include 28 weeks full pay for maternity/adoption leave and four weeks full pay for paternity/partners leave.
  • Pension, share incentive plan, volunteering leave, recognition schemes and much more…

Diversity and inclusion

We are committed to creating an inclusive workplace. Our diversity and inclusion strategy values everyone and aims to reach their full potential. We encourage applications from armed forces personnel, veterans and reservists, and are a Gold Award holder in the Ministry of Defence Employer Recognition Scheme.

As a Disability Confident Employer, we are committed to working with people who have disabilities and long‑term health conditions to remove barriers for them in obtaining employment. We are also committed to offering applicants with a disability an interview if they meet the minimum requirements for the role. For more information, visit https://disabilityconfident.campaign.gov.uk/

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Posted: July 8th, 2026