Growth Capacity and Conversion Planning Director

The mandate

The interim Director will create a financially controlled view of how planned growth converts into productive capacity and realised contribution. Demand ambition, recruitment, enabling spend and operational readiness are currently planned on different clocks, producing periods where cost lands well before output or demand cannot be served despite approved investment. Mobilisation is needed within one month.

The work will connect demand scenarios to capacity units, acquisition lead time, ramp, bottlenecks and cash consequence. It must make explicit which investments preserve optionality, which create irreversible commitments and which constraints cannot be solved with incremental spend inside the relevant horizon.

Interim authority covers capacity assumptions, integrated-plan controls, readiness gates and escalation of unsupported growth cases. The Director will not approve hiring, choose suppliers, alter service commitments or own commercial conversion. Accountable leaders make those decisions after receiving the reconciled economic view.

The twelve-month horizon includes a full annual cycle and sufficient time for a permanent owner to demonstrate operation under changed demand. Handover will be accepted only after the successor leads two capacity councils, refreshes the downside case and explains realised ramp variance without hidden central adjustments.

What you will own

• Define productive-capacity units and reconcile them to workforce, contracted resource, fixed assets, enabling spend and delivery constraints.
• Create demand-to-capacity scenarios showing lead time, ramp curve, bottleneck, utilisation and cash consequences at monthly intervals.
• Establish readiness gates that prevent spend release when dependent capacity, capability or demand evidence remains absent.
• Quantify the economics of build, buy, partner, defer and stop options without taking ownership of the operating choice.
• Introduce a constraint register with time-to-relief, accountable owner, cost, dependency and financial exposure.
• Track ramp performance separately from steady-state productivity so early under-delivery is neither hidden nor permanently embedded.
• Chair a monthly growth-capacity council that records choices, trigger movements and actions against the integrated outlook.
• Transfer model, council authority and downside refresh to a permanent Director through two witnessed cycles.

Candidate qualifications

• At least 15 years in FP&A, capacity planning or growth investment, including Director-level interim accountability.
• A case where connecting demand and capacity prevented premature cost, lost opportunity or an unexecutable growth commitment.
• Expertise in ramp curves, bottleneck economics, utilisation, option comparison, cash timing and integrated scenario models.
• Evidence of distinguishing capacity that is funded, contracted, available and productively deployed.
• Experience challenging ambitious growth plans without substituting finance judgement for commercial or operating decisions.
• Strong governance around contingent commitments, readiness gates and benefits that depend on multiple owners.
• Availability for on-site work in Auckland and a complete twelve-month term including successor-led cycles.

Working terms and boundaries

• The appointment runs twelve months, five days a week, with at most four additional weeks for a specifically failed handover test.
• The Director owns planning assumptions and readiness evidence; hiring, procurement, commercial commitments and operating execution are excluded.
• On-site presence is required for monthly capacity councils and all major planning and successor-rehearsal periods.
• Growth benefits cannot enter the accepted outlook unless demand, capacity, ramp and timing dependencies are explicitly owned.
• Exit requires an operated integrated model, active constraint register, successor-led downside refresh and signed control transfer.

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 6 October 2026. Mandate reference FPA-INT-2026-AKL-26.