Country Managing Director — Renewables Construction Book

The mandate

A privately held renewables infrastructure business has won a substantial UAE construction book and now faces several concession relationships approaching renewal at the same time. The board seeks a Country Managing Director who can strengthen delivery, make credible commitments to public and private counterparties, and decide which future opportunities the country platform can safely absorb.

The country perimeter is approximately AED 28,800 million across projects and operating assets, with 1,200 employees and material partners. Accountability encompasses country P&L, development, construction, commercial management, customer and authority relationships, safety, supply chain, people and risk. Functional executives retain professional standards and the group approves reserved capital. The Managing Director owns the integrated UAE result and cannot attribute failure to interfaces between functions.

The renewables book includes projects at different stages: development rights awaiting bankability, solar or storage packages in construction, and assets completing performance tests. Each has distinct revenue recognition, cash, grid and liquidated-damages exposure. The new leader must establish a country baseline that shows what has been sold, what can be delivered and which obligations remain dependent on unconfirmed design, land, interconnection or suppliers.

Concession renewal is broader than negotiation. Counterparties will assess operational performance, local capability, project conduct and the realism of future investment. The Managing Director must join historical service evidence with a forward delivery proposition. Growth will be earned by closing commitments, not by submitting the largest pipeline.

Why this seat is open

This is a planned replacement. The incumbent remains through an agreed transition and will support an orderly transfer of counterparties, project history and leadership responsibilities. The board has provided four to six months for assessment and diligence while live recovery continues. Confidentiality allows employees, customers and partners to receive a sequenced announcement rather than speculation.

What you will own

• Carry the UAE P&L, cash, capital, safety and customer commitments.
• Establish a single truth for schedule, cost, claims and commissioning exposure.
• Reset growth gates to verified engineering and delivery capacity.
• Lead concession renewal with costed service and investment choices.
• Govern local content, partners, authorities and community obligations.
• Build a country executive team with ready succession for critical seats.

The delivery reset will focus on interfaces. Development teams must hand over consent, land, resource, grid and offtake assumptions in a controlled form. Engineering release will be tied to procurement and site need; long-lead orders will not substitute for a stable design. Construction, commissioning and operations leaders will agree system boundaries and acceptance evidence before work reaches the energisation path. The Managing Director will chair the decisions where one project seeks scarce country capacity at another's expense.

Commercial control must distinguish genuine entitlement from optimistic recovery. Contract notices, variations, prolongation costs, customer concessions and supplier back-charges will be reconciled to schedule facts and relationship strategy. Forecast margin will not include claims merely because correspondence exists. The board expects early recommendations on settlement, pursuit or provision, with legal input but clear business ownership.

Safety leadership will extend into partner and commissioning activity. High-energy work, temporary systems, lifting, heat exposure and simultaneous operations require field verification, not aggregate dashboards. Serious precursors will trigger learning across sites, even when no injury occurred. Programme pressure will never authorise bypassing isolation, testing or competent-person requirements.

Growth choices will be constrained by executable capacity. Each bid will name engineering authorities, project leadership, key suppliers, working-capital requirement and grid assumptions. The Managing Director can defer or decline an opportunity that would compromise existing concessions. Joint ventures will define governance, contribution, information rights and deadlock routes before bid spend becomes material.

Renewal propositions will reconcile customer priorities with whole-life economics. Performance guarantees, availability, repowering, storage augmentation, local content and future tariff implications will be scenario-tested. The leader will protect institutional relationships through transparent choices; promising an unfunded improvement to secure an extension is unacceptable.

The first 12 months

In the first 60 days, the Managing Director will validate the ten largest schedule, margin and cash exposures, visit priority sites and assess the country leadership team. The board will receive a recovery sequence, concession map and explicit decisions on unsupported pipeline commitments.

By month seven, three troubled project interfaces should operate under integrated plans, the two most consequential renewals should have approved negotiating ranges, and bid governance should show named capacity for every priority submission. At least one material claim or supplier dispute must reach a fact-based settlement or board-approved pursuit path.

At year-end, milestone reliability should exceed 90%, forecast gross-margin variance remain within 150 basis points and overdue project cash fall 20%. High-potential concessions must meet all internal renewal gates, recordable safety events should improve by at least 15%, and 75% of country executive roles should have tested emergency cover.

What the board will measure

• Predictable delivery from design release through grid acceptance.
• Cash and margin forecasts free of unsupported claims.
• Renewals supported by performance and credible capacity.
• Visible safety ownership across contractors and commissioning.
• A country team able to grow without dependence on one leader.

The person

You are a country chief executive, Managing Director or regional infrastructure leader with more than 28 years of experience. You have owned at least AED 16,700 million of P&L, book or accountable portfolio and led 850 or more people. Your record includes renewables, power infrastructure or comparable engineered projects with concession, EPC and commissioning consequence.

Assessment will examine a delivery recovery where you revised the commercial forecast, a growth opportunity you declined because capacity was not credible, and a high-stakes counterparty renewal. You must explain how field evidence reached your decisions and how results held after the initial intervention. Pure business-development experience without country operating accountability will not meet the threshold.

This onsite Dubai appointment requires extensive travel across projects, authorities, partners and customers. International relocation is supported, subject to the demands of a country leadership role.

Compensation and terms

Fixed compensation is AED 2.8–4.0 million plus annual incentive and LTI. Measures cover cash, margin reliability, delivery, safety, concession outcomes, controlled growth and succession. Long-term participation follows the final scope and standard vesting conditions; an orderly notice period can be considered.

Confidentiality

The company, project sites, customers, concessions and performance position are withheld. Disclosure follows reciprocal interest, qualification and confidentiality. Rounded figures and blended circumstances prevent triangulation of the UAE platform.