Preconstruction Manager
Willmott Dixon have an exciting opportunity for a Preconstruction Manager to join our high-performing central work-winning team to lead, influence and shape what comes next.
Our Hybrid Bid Service works nationally, integrating and collaborating with our five regional construction businesses to pursue and secure major education projects through the Department for Education's Construction Framework.
The team was instrumental in securing more than £500m of DfE work during 2025, establishing Willmott Dixon as one of a small number of consistently high-performing work winners on the framework. The opportunity ahead is considerable: a programme of work valued at approximately £13bn over the next six years.
We're looking for an accomplished preconstruction leader who wants the opportunity to influence how a national preconstruction service develops — bringing experience, ideas, energy and leadership to a well regarded service and support us to become even better.
This is a genuinely national role and your home location isn't important to us.
Much of the team works from home, coming together in Central London typically one or two days each week, alongside travel to customers, projects and our regional offices when required.
Duties and responsibilities in this leading national role:
You'll take senior responsibility for major opportunities from early engagement, through competitive tender and into early preconstruction, before transitioning projects to our regional delivery teams.
You'll establish win strategies, interrogate customer requirements and lead multidisciplinary teams spanning design, commercial, planning, sustainability, procurement, technical and operations.
You'll challenge the emerging solution, identify critical risks and opportunities, test programme and commercial assumptions and ensure our proposition is both compelling to the customer and deliverable by our project teams.
Your influence will extend beyond individual bids as you'll work directly with senior leaders across all five of our regional businesses and central services, building relationships and networks across Willmott Dixon and drawing on some of our most experienced construction professionals.
The national perspective gives you the opportunity to spot patterns and emerging trends that individual regions cannot always see and turn those insights into better ways of working.
You'll have the opportunity to influence how we develop a more consistent, standardised and scalable preconstruction approach, while retaining the creativity and flexibility needed to find the right answer for each customer and project.
That could mean introducing an idea from another organisation or sector, spotting an emerging trend across our five regions, developing a new way of challenging design or risk, or helping us rethink how data and knowledge support decision-making.
You'll also have the opportunity to help shape our AI-enabled work-winning infrastructure — influencing how we use technology, organisational knowledge and insight to augment our people and improve the quality and efficiency of preconstruction.
Essential and Desirable Criteria
- Strong experience in preconstruction within a main contracting environment with a track record of leading complex bids and multidisciplinary teams.
- History of leading a team of experienced professionals rather than simply managing a process.
- An exceptional understanding of the full preconstruction process with experience of successful bid, tender, and delivery.
- Good commercial awareness and understanding of project risk.
- The ability to bring together multiple technical disciplines around a clear strategy.
- Strong customer and stakeholder management skills.
- The confidence to influence at senior level.
- Experience of developing and leading high-performing teams.
- (Desirable) Experience of preconstruction within the education sector
Personal Qualities
For the right person, this role has genuine long-term potential.
Once you've demonstrated your capability, become established within Willmott Dixon and earned the trust of the team and our regional businesses, there is a clear opportunity to progress towards leading the Hybrid Bid Service.
We will create opportunity for a candidate who can perform, build strong relationships, demonstrate leadership and show they can make both the team and the wider business better.
Additional Information
We're ambitious about performance without creating a culture driven by hierarchy or individual status.
We value collaboration over hierarchy, contribution over status and constructive challenge over ego.
People are encouraged to question, experiment and introduce ideas. We want different perspectives around the table and leaders who create the conditions for other talented people to perform at their best.
That means you'll have the freedom to be entrepreneurial within a successful, well-supported national business: spotting opportunities, testing ideas and turning the best of them into new ways of working.
You'll join an experienced team with a strong record of success — but with the autonomy and expectation to help shape what it becomes next.
If you're looking for greater influence, national exposure, genuine autonomy and the opportunity to progress towards leading a high-performing service, we'd like to talk.
About Us
With over 170 years of rich history, Willmott Dixon’s purpose is beyond profit; delivering brilliant buildings, transforming lives, strengthening communities and enhancing the environment so our world is fit for future generations. Ensuring that we add lasting value to the neighbourhoods we work in; our values, people, innovation, partnerships and focus on sustainability has allowed us to build a successful and solid privately owned business where our people can thrive.
Willmott Dixon was recognised by The Sunday Times as one of the Top 10 "Big" Companies to Work For in 2025, named among the Times Top 50 Employers for Gender Equality in 2024, and ranked in the Top Five of Europe’s 1,000 best workplaces by the Financial Times in 2025.
Willmott Dixon is also the first major contractor and developer to win a King's Award for Enterprise in the category of sustainable development.
