Your role
As a Construction Director, you will play a pivotal role in overseeing the planning, coordination, and execution of construction projects related to data centre facilities. You will be responsible for ensuring the successful completion of projects within budget and on schedule, while maintaining the highest standards of quality, safety, and client satisfaction.
The Digital Realty Construction Director is responsible for the planning, coordination, and oversight of the construction of our facilities which range from full builds to fit-outs, upgrades, landing stations or infrastructure. This includes managing budgets, schedules, and resources, as well as ensuring that projects are completed on time, within budget, and to the highest Safety & quality standards. The ideal candidate will have a strong understanding of data centre construction principles and practices, as well as excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
In addition, this role will assist with improving the conception, definition and execution of our construction projects and be based on site full time whilst maintaining best practices as well as clear roles & responsibilities for any consultant support.
The primary purpose of the role will ensure consistent, efficient, predictable, timely and high-quality execution of our construction projects.
What you’ll do
Safety:
- Be a safety thought leader - Implement and enforce a robust safety culture to maintain a safe work environment and work closely with the dedicated Health and Safety Manager promote a safe working environment
Project Planning and Coordination:
- Plan and manage the construction of our facilities from start to finish
- Develop budgets and schedules, and track progress against them
- Collaborate with stakeholders and general contractors to develop project plans, schedules, and budgets for our construction projects.
- Coordinate with internal stakeholders to define project goals, objectives, and performance criteria.
- Ensure that projects are completed on time, within budget, and to our quality standards
Construction Oversight:
- Oversee all phases of the construction process, from design development and procurement to construction and closeout.
- Manage the selection and negotiation process with contractors, subcontractors, and vendors to ensure compliance with project requirements and specifications.
- May be based full time on site to monitor progress, address any issues, and ensure compliance with safety protocols and quality standards.
- Review and approve construction documents, change orders, and other project-related documentation.
- Manage and motivate project teams
Budget and Cost Control:
- Develop and monitor project budgets, tracking expenditures and ensuring adherence to approved budgets.
- Analyse project costs, identify cost-saving opportunities, and recommend value engineering options without compromising quality and functionality.
- Review and approve contractor payment applications and invoices.
- Manage financial project control using standardised tracking sheets
Stakeholder Communication:
- Serve as the primary point of contact for operations, customers, providing regular project updates, addressing concerns, and managing expectations.
- Foster effective communication and collaboration among project team members, ensuring timely resolution of issues and conflicts.
- Participate in project meetings, presentations, and progress reports.
- Sets up and manages a governance, communication and reporting structure involving senior HQ stakeholders as well as individual country stakeholders to maintain constant synchronisation in order to help efficient and effective project execution.
- Partner with Design Manager to deliver data center capacity aligned with business unit strategic direction
Contract Management:
- Negotiate contracts with contractors, consultants, and suppliers,
Quality Assurance:
- Implement and enforce quality control procedures to ensure construction activities align with industry standards and project specifications.
- Conduct inspections and quality audits to verify compliance with design intent and regulatory requirements.
- Identify and resolve any construction-related issues or deficiencies.
What you’ll need
- Extensive advanced experience working construction project management, preferably in data centres
- Strong background in Project Management methodologies
- Experience in managing a construction project.
- Experience in Continuous Process Improvement and defining and managing associated metrics and KPIs.
- Experience in data centres or a similar mission critical environment is considered a significant advantage.
- Experience of working in a European multi-cultural environment.
The role will require the individual to have or be:
- Good problem-solving skills
- People Management and influencing skills
- Analytical
- Stress-resilient
- Excellent communication skills – Internal and External stakeholders, sensitive to cultural differences
- Pro-active
- Customer focus
- Flexible
A bit about us
Digital Realty brings companies and data together by delivering the full spectrum of data center, colocation and interconnection solutions. PlatformDIGITAL®, the company's global data center platform, provides customers with a secure data meeting place and a proven Pervasive Datacenter Architecture (PDx™) solution methodology for powering innovation and efficiently managing Data Gravity challenges. Digital Realty gives its customers access to the connected data communities that matter to them with a global data center footprint of 300+ facilities in 50+ metros across 25+ countries on six continents.
What we can offer you
Our rapidly evolving business sector offers the opportunity to be part of a courageous and passionate team who work together to understand and meet the changing needs of our global customers. Join us and you’ll be part of a supportive and inclusive environment where you can bring your whole self to work. As part of our team, you’ll get to work with people from different business areas, challenge the way we do things and put your ideas into action. We’ll also give you plenty of development opportunities so you can build a rewarding and successful career with us. This is an exciting time to join our business so apply now and make your mark on our future.
