Director Operations BHR Ontario

The Opportunity:

WSP is currently seeking an Operations Director for Ontario to join our Bridges, Highways & Roads team that are represented across in Ontario. Reporting to the Vice President, this roles typically has no direct reports, but influences specifically regional market segment directors and managers. Partners with and leverages shared services such as finance, human resources, legal, quality and safety.

This position provides operational leadership and direction for the Bridges, Highways, Roads, Major Projects, Electrical/ITS design services as well as Construction Administration services in Ontario. The role is responsible for optimizing the financial, commercial, and project delivery performance of the regional market segment. The role ensures coordination of efforts across offices and other regional market segments, and develops plans, programs and organizational objectives to enhance margins, workforce utilization, and cash generation. All activities are undertaken in support of the WSP Canada strategic plan.

Why choose WSP?

• We value and are committed to upholding a culture of inclusion and belonging
• Our Flexible Work Policy – we recognize the importance of balance in our lives and encourage you to prioritize the balance in yours. We will support you on and off the job so you can be fully present in both your work and home lives.
• A Canadian success story - we're proud to wear the red and white of this beautiful country and show the world what Canada has to offer.
• Enhance the world around you - from the environment to the highways, to the buildings and the terrain, WSP is the fabric of Canada.
• Outstanding career opportunities - we're growing and pushing ourselves every day to be greater than yesterday - we're open to your ideas and trying new things.
• A phenomenal collaborative culture and a workforce filled with genuinely good people who are doing humbly important work. Come find out for yourself what it's like to be a part of our journey.

We offer attractive pay, flexible work options, a great corporate culture, comprehensive and employee-focused benefits including virtual healthcare and a wellness platform as well as great savings programs, and a clear vision for the future.

#WeAreWSP

What you can expect to do here:

• Help to develop the regional operating plan and financial forecasts in collaboration with the Vice President, the finance leader and the individual directors and managers;
• Effectively communicates the operating plan and targets, engaging all directors, managers and project management employees in achieving the objectives of the regional market segment;
• Manages the implementation of the operating plan and its objectives for the regional market segment, with primary efforts focused on project delivery excellence, financial performance, and adherence to the regional market segment’s strategic plan;
• Responsible for optimizing the performance of the regional market segment operations, including, project margin, staff utilization, DSO, and general administration costs;
• With key support by the regional market segment finance leader, forecasts the regional market sector’s financial performance, ensuring accurate revenue recognition and preparation of monthly/ quarterly/annual forecasts;
• 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 regional market segment directors and 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 in order to meet client expectations and achieve or exceed profitability targets for the regional market segment;
• Works 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 regional market segment requirements and proper deployment and utilization within the regional market segment;
• Collaborates with peers nationally and in other regions to leverage and implement project delivery and other best practices;
• Promotes collaboration across offices to ensure effective resource sharing, workload/resource balancing and to bring the best the regional market segment has to bear to meet the needs of clients;
• Monitors business development investments to deliver acceptable returns on the investments, aligned with the regional market segment strategy and its backlog and sales targets;
• Visibly champions the WSP programs of safety and ethics & compliance to ensure they are an overriding part of the organizational culture.

What you’ll bring to WSP :

• Bachelor's degree in business, engineering or other technical discipline;
• Minimum of ten (10) years of experience managing in the engineering or related sectors which deliver large, technical and complex projects. Experience in project management is considered a plus;
• A strong and sustained history of delivering quality financial performance and results;
• Demonstrated ability to address challenging or turnaround situations in response to challenging priorities in the market;
• Ability to assess situations and be pro-active and creative in your approach and solution;
• A strong reputation for uncompromising integrity;
• Demonstrated good judgment balanced with informed risk taking;
• Highly professional with strong written and oral communication skills;
• Comfortable with matrix management models;
• Confidence to influence a high caliber team to drive a business to higher performance levels and seize the opportunities presented internally and in the market;
• Advanced people and leadership skills to effectively manage relationships which may be indirect in order to achieve consensus, direction and achievement of results;
• A track record of creating a climate where people want to do their best through working collaboratively, empowering teams to identify and solve problems, creating a clear sense of identity with the company, and holding teams accountable for meeting their collective goals;
• Internal WSP experience considered a strong asset, but not required.