Commercial Director

About the Role

AtkinsRéalis is seeking a Commercial Director for a full-time position in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This role involves leading all commercial, contractual, and cost management functions across a major capital works program on behalf of the PMC. The Commercial Director provides strategic commercial leadership, ensuring robust contract administration, effective cost control, commercial governance, risk management, and successful commercial outcomes throughout the project lifecycle. The position acts as the client's trusted commercial advisor, administering contracts under FIDIC conditions and managing commercial interfaces between clients, contractors, consultants, and key stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities

• Provide strategic commercial leadership across large-scale mixed-use developments and advise client executives on commercial risks and opportunities.
• Lead administration of contracts under FIDIC Red Book, Yellow Book, Silver Book, and bespoke conditions, including managing variations, change orders, and extensions of time.
• Direct all cost planning, estimating, budgeting, forecasting, and reporting activities, ensuring robust change management controls.
• Lead assessment and defense of contractor claims, preparing detailed entitlement reviews and supporting dispute resolution processes.
• Support procurement strategy development, lead commercial evaluations, and participate in contractor selection.
• Identify, quantify, and mitigate commercial risks, maintaining commercial risk registers.
• Lead multidisciplinary commercial and quantity surveying teams, fostering a high-performance commercial management culture.
• Manage key stakeholder interfaces, including client executive management, project directors, legal counsel, and government authorities.

Qualifications and Experience

• Education: Bachelor's Degree in Quantity Surveying, Commercial Management, Construction Management, Engineering, or a related discipline. A Master's Degree is preferred.
• Professional Memberships: MRICS / FRICS, MCIOB / FCIOB, AACE International, RIBA (where applicable), or Chartered Quantity Surveyor.
• Experience: 20+ years of commercial management experience, with significant experience delivering major capital projects exceeding USD 500M. Previous Commercial Director or Head of Commercial roles within PMC or client organizations are required.
• Regional Experience: Extensive Middle East experience is preferred.
• Contractual Expertise: Demonstrated expertise in FIDIC contract administration and a proven record managing claims, disputes, and change management on complex programs.
• Leadership: Experience leading large commercial teams across multiple project packages.

Technical Competencies

• Contractual: FIDIC Contract Administration, Variations & Change Management, Extensions of Time (EOT), Claims & Dispute Resolution, Commercial Risk Management, Contract Negotiation, Procurement Strategy.
• Cost Management: Cost Planning, Cost Control, Budget Management, Forecasting, Cash Flow Analysis, Value Engineering, Earned Value Management, Cost Assurance.
• Commercial Systems: Proficiency with Oracle Primavera Unifier, Oracle P6, SAP, Power BI, CostX, CEMAR, and Aconex.

Leadership Skills

• Executive Stakeholder Management
• Commercial Acumen
• Strategic Thinking
• Negotiation & Influence
• Decision Making
• Team Leadership
• Conflict Resolution
• Client Relationship Management

Performance Indicators

Key performance indicators for this role include cost performance against approved budget, commercial risk reduction metrics, value of claims successfully resolved, accuracy of cost forecasting, contract compliance performance, change order cycle times, cash flow predictability, commercial audit outcomes, and client satisfaction scores.