Head of commercial

The Head of Commercial will be responsible for developing a commercial team that is able to close complex deals quickly and efficiently, while achieving a good balance of risk and reward for Heat UK. Your team is an essential part of our success, taking responsibility for shaping and delivering deals from early business development stages through to the delivery phase of the project. Key outcomes are influencing customers, through planning and delivering high quality bids and proposals, winning projects, through commercial negotiations and successful closure, and ensuring that contracts are managed through mobilisation, construction and commissioning.

You will have oversight over the whole business and responsibility to grow the business and deliver Vattenfall’s strategy. You will work closely with colleagues in the legal, finance and procurement departments to innovate, finding alternative commercial structures which reduce risk or increase value by better meeting clients’ needs, really understanding the interplay between risks, client requirements, engineering decisions, contractual terms, investments, opex and our sub-contracts. Agreeing the best ways to work together with these departments as well as sales and engineering will be critical to ensuring collective success.

As well as leading our team of Commercial Managers and Analysts, this role will also be responsible for managing the commercial aspects of our most important deals, developing them from early bidding stages all the way through to contract close and into project delivery.

Through your team and your own activity, you will be accountable for oversight of a large number of deals in the early stages and currently in negotiation. Across all of these you will ensure rigour by providing review, challenge and approval of commercial assumptions, business cases and financial models. The Vattenfall Group governance process will be one of your priorities, ensuring our deals are approved at the various stage-gates, and to achieve this you will be the owner of our commercial processes and internal governance within Heat UK. To deliver continuous improvement you will periodically review the team’s capabilities, training needs, processes and tools as well as flexing resource allocation to manage capacity and capability constraints.

Finally, as well as leading major deals, you will be an escalation point on all our deals. This means you are an effective problem solver and negotiator, experienced at finding common ground with counterparties and identifying solutions to unlock stalemates. You will strike a balance between focus on your own deals and these escalations, with staying close enough to the portfolio of deals that you can anticipate and avoid the need for such escalations – but quickly get up to speed if required.

The role will be pivotal to business growth, with responsibility for supporting the business to win and close [10-20 projects] per year over the next 5y, including upselling activity. You will also ensure a smooth transition from bidding and negotiation to “on the ground works”.

Key Responsibilities / Duties

• Develop a commercial team that is able to close complex deals quickly and efficiently and is able to communicate clearly the risk reward profile of different positions
• Review, challenge and approve commercial assumptions, business cases and financial models
• Manage and provide oversight for financial modelling provided by Analysts and in-house Valuations team across the portfolio of deals
• Be the commercial lead on our largest deals (as a guide, greater than [20,000] home equivalents, [60MW] heat capacity or [£50m] total investment), working with Sales to deliver technical and commercial proposals to clients, both private developers and Local Authorities, then winning, negotiating, successfully closing contracts and securing approval for Final Investment Decision (FID)
• Ensure projects progress through Vattenfall stage-gates and internal governance groups (PSG, PRB, Transactional Risk, EGM)
• Establish effective ways of working with legal / engineering / sales / procurement
• Contribute to innovation around commercial and financial structures
• Scope and manage major partnerships with consultants and delivery partners
• Develop strategic relationships with regional and local government to steer policy and strengthen Vattenfall’s market presence
• Represent Vattenfall Heat with clients, customers, government ministers, and other stakeholders

Knowledge and Skills

• Engaging, communicative, driven and diligent commercial professional
• Able to balance risk and reward and to find win-win outcomes while considering the big picture from client requirements and engineering design to supply chain partnerships and T&Cs.
• Ability to have a long-term view (our projects and contracts are 40y+) and propose creative and flexible solutions to commercial needs will be key for this.
• High motivation to contribute to Vattenfall’s ambitions, a self-starter and goal-oriented
• Fun, engaging and inspiring attitude
• Diligent and with attention to detail
• Ability to translate technical inputs into commercial impact, and to identify and manage risks in changing and challenging environments.
• Able to understand commercial fundamentals, from financial models and how key drivers shape solutions, to tariff structures, financing and contracts.
• Able to draft and agree heads of terms will enable you to engage legal resource when it is really needed.

• Professional services, financial, legal, property, advisory or energy industry background
• Relevant experience of negotiating with Director-level stakeholders, leading teams and delivering results.
• Proven experience overseeing colleagues and operating as a head of department while recognising when complexity or issues mean it is the right time to get directly involved.
• Team leadership, with direct and project teams, leading through uncertainty and helping to bring structure to projects and teams
• Proven experience forming strong relationships with peers, in particular sales, legal and engineering.
• Experience leading tough negotiation with a strong teamwork ethic.
• Extensive commercial experience on major, complex deals within relevant sectors (including but not limited to energy, real estate, infrastructure)
• Proven experience in business development, bidding, and negotiation – with a good understanding of risk management, use of financial models to inform decision making, and ability to understand complex contracting structures
• An understanding of contract law, preferably including construction law from the perspective of previous work in commercial or even legal roles – in the latter case, we can provide training to support understanding of modelling and DH specifics
• Understanding of UK energy and property markets particularly focusing on the drivers for low carbon energy
• Ability to work in the interfaces between technical, commercial, operations, construction, and legal specialist, bringing people together
• Experience in working with senior and C-suite level executives to deliver projects and targets from internal and external organizations
• Managing projects to strict and challenging deadlines