Aerospace Capital and Programme-Margin Adviser

The mandate

The investment committee repeatedly encounters the same unresolved question: which aerospace programme commitments merit scarce capital when quoted lifetime returns rely on uncertain production volumes, engineering changes and customer qualification timing? The adviser is asked to expose the decision behind the model, not to supply a reassuring discount rate. Work will compare capacity expansion, tooling reuse and deferred investment on a consistent cash and risk basis.

Four days each month are reserved for proposal review, assumption interviews and a written challenge session. Attendance at the scheduled investment committee is included in the retainer, with materials supplied five working days beforehand. The adviser will acknowledge urgent questions within one business day and give a considered written response within three; requests requiring fresh diligence must be separately scoped rather than consuming unlimited availability.

The nine-month advisory term begins on 19 October 2026, with renewal requiring an explicit committee decision. At month eight, the committee chair decides whether a further independently contracted period is justified by the remaining decision agenda. The engagement is based in Bengaluru with remote document work and prearranged India engineering visits. Continuation is not automatic, and there is no commitment to stay through every programme's eventual production life.

The adviser carries no line authority and no executive responsibility. Programme approval, capital spending, forecasts and statutory accounting remain with management and the committee. Advice must identify where evidence is insufficient, where alternatives are asymmetric and where apparently precise returns depend on an unsupported recovery assumption. The committee may reject a recommendation, but the grounds and residual exposure should remain visible in its decision record.

Up to two unrelated advisory commitments can coexist if their timetables remain deliverable. Advising a competing bidder for the same programme, holding an undisclosed supplier economic interest or reviewing a proposal previously prepared under another retainer would conflict. Those situations require disclosure before access is granted; restricted subject areas, recusal or termination are practical safeguards, not a ceremonial declaration.

What you will own

• Test capital papers against programme-specific volume evidence, separating contracted activity, plausible options and upside that should not fund the base case.
• Press presenters to quantify change-order, qualification-delay and warranty downside before ranking nominal internal rates of return or endorsing irreversible tooling spend.
• Shape an investment comparison sheet that reveals sunk cost, reusable tooling value and the reversible elements of each capacity decision.
• Question the proposed working-capital envelope using supplier commitments and customer milestone timing rather than generic revenue ratios that obscure programme-specific funding risk.
• Challenge cross-border cost-allocation assumptions with finance and tax owners, recording unresolved policy dependencies and their investment consequences without issuing a tax opinion.
• Recommend decision triggers for staged release of capital, including the evidence that would justify stopping, delaying or resizing a programme commitment.

Candidate qualifications

• Provide at least eighteen years of finance experience with director-level exposure to engineered manufacturing investment decisions. Describe one capital proposal you challenged despite strong sponsorship, the alternative you made comparable and the evidence that subsequently validated or disproved your advice. The committee needs judgement under imperfect information, not a catalogue of models you commissioned.
• Demonstrate familiarity with long-cycle programme margin, overhead absorption, warranty exposure and contract economics across Ind AS and an international reporting framework. Show how you prevented an accounting treatment from being mistaken for investment value, and explain the uncertainty you left explicit rather than burying it in a sensitivity appendix.
• Bring experience translating engineering and procurement inputs into board-usable cash scenarios. Evidence should show respectful technical challenge, a bounded data request and a recommendation that changed a release gate or risk allocation. A finance adviser must recognise when technical certification knowledge belongs with qualified engineering specialists.
• Disclose current advisory, employment, investment and supplier relationships relevant to aerospace programme decisions. Provide an example of a recusal or information barrier you implemented, and explain how you sustained a predictable review cadence alongside concurrent work. Confidential evidence can be anonymised, but decision ownership and conflicts must remain verifiable.

Application

Applications for this mandate are received in one way only: through the India Board Terminal's application process. It is automated end to end. Your Executive Passport travels to the mandate holder in its confidential form, your answers to the three questions below are read before anything else in your file, and every stage that follows is recorded on your applications page.

There is no address to write to and no intermediary to call. The mandate holder reads what the Terminal delivers and nothing else, which is what keeps the process the same for every applicant and keeps your name out of it until you release it. Applications close on 8 October 2026. Mandate reference PCT-ADV-2026-IND-41.