Talent Right is partnering with a specialist construction contractor to recruit a Head of Pre-Construction.
Our client has built this function deliberately: a senior commercial lead sitting between sales and delivery, making sure the business only chases work it can win, prices it properly, and can actually build it.
If you have come up through estimating, commercial management or civil engineering, and you want to own a function rather than run a desk, this is worth reading.
About the Client
Our client is a specialist contractor operating nationally across Australia from offices in several states, delivering a critical trade package into major construction and infrastructure projects.
Their work sits at the complex end of the sector: data centres, defence, correctional facilities, airports and major infrastructure, delivered for tier one head contractors and government. Projects typically run between $1 million and $20 million, and the business has moved away from the smaller local work that once filled the calendar.
They have restructured from a state-based operation into a national one, with a leadership team of function heads reporting to the Managing Director. Growth is quick, and that pace brings change. The business is upfront about it.
About the Role
Reporting directly to the Managing Director, you own the pre-construction function nationally: from qualified opportunity through tender strategy, estimating, buildability, methodology, value engineering, procurement and commercial review, to the point the project is handed across to Delivery.
You will lead five to eight people across estimating, pre-construction management, and drafting and engineering, with the long-term plan being one of each discipline in each office. How you build that team is largely yours to decide, within budget.
This is a process role as much as a commercial one. By the time a tender reaches best and final offer, every assumption needs to have been tested, every risk visible and priced, and the margin on paper needs to be a margin that can actually be delivered. Then you close the loop, taking what Delivery learns on site back into the rates, methodology and assumptions used on the next one.
You sit between the client relations team on one side and Delivery on the other, and the Head of Delivery is in the same office by design. The base is Sydney. Travel is national and largely self-directed, but you will need to get in front of your teams in the other offices regularly. The role is office-based to start, with hybrid flexibility once you are established.




Key Responsibilities
Lead the function
Lead and build the national pre-construction team, setting standards and accountabilities
Allocate resources across tenders, and manage workload, performance and priorities
Coach and develop estimators and pre-construction managers, and build succession capability
Tender strategy and commercial ownership
Own pre-construction strategy on major and strategically important opportunities
Challenge tender assumptions and make sure tenders sit within the business risk appetite
Own margin and risk sign‐off, including qualifications, exclusions and red-line positions
Participate in key tender interviews, negotiations and best and final offers
Buildability and delivery strategy
Make sure significant tenders are properly tested for buildability
Challenge methodology, staging, productivity and resource assumptions, working with Delivery early
Test programme achievability and identify critical path, access, interface and logistics constraints
Develop preliminary execution and mobilisation strategies
Estimating standards and risk
Own the national estimating methodology, WBS, cost codes, rates, assumptions and exclusions
Lead identification of commercial, contractual, operational and delivery risk, and make sure it is allowed for
Maintain controls around contingency and risk allowances
Escalate material risk before submission, and keep it visible through to handover
Value engineering, procurement and commercial review
Lead value engineering across major tenders, including alternative methodologies, materials and sequencing
Set national and project procurement strategy, and identify long‐lead and critical‐path items
Review key subcontractor and supplier pricing, and align subcontract terms with head contract obligations
Work with Commercial on head contract review, contractual exposure and material obligations
Handover and feedback loop
Own the pre-construction to delivery handover process, and chair handover meetings
Make sure no project mobilises without scope, programme, budget, margin, procurement, risk and client expectations properly transferred




Establish a formal feedback process from Delivery, comparing actual performance against tender assumptions
Use close‐out data to improve rates, productivity assumptions, exclusions and methodology
The Ideal Candidate
Senior experience in pre‐construction, estimating, commercial management or project management, within construction, civil or infrastructure
A practical understanding of civil construction, not just the commercial side of it
Demonstrated experience leading estimating or pre‐construction teams
Experience managing complex tenders, ideally across infrastructure, utilities, defence, transport or civil
Strong commercial judgement, and comfortable owning margin and risk sign‐off
Solid grasp of Australian Standard contracts, subcontract agreements and commercial terms
Process‐driven and disciplined, with the rigour to make a standard stick across five offices
Genuinely comfortable with new technology, including AI tooling in contract review and tender work
Current Australian driver licence
A tertiary qualification in construction management, engineering, quantity surveying, project management or commerce is preferred, and a civil engineering background suits the process discipline this role needs. That said, our client has been clear that they would rather take the right attitude and train the skill than take the skill and inherit the wrong attitude.
You do not need prior experience in our client's specific trade. They are looking to construction, civil, and infrastructure for the commercial and process discipline this role needs, and will cover the technical side on the way through.
One thing worth being straight about. This business is scaling quickly, and the heads of function are still working out where the lines sit between them. The person who does well here will sort that out in the room rather than dig in, and will be more interested in building something than in applying what worked somewhere else a decade ago.
Why This Role?
A seat on a small leadership team of function heads, reporting directly to the Managing Director
Real autonomy to build and run your team the way you think is right
Short-term incentive plan on top of base, with meaningful upside on company target achievement
Fully maintained vehicle and superannuation
A relatively current function that you will shape rather than inherit
A tender pipeline across data centres, defence, correctional facilities and major infrastructure
Sydney base, with hybrid flexibility once you are established

📌 Head Of Pre-Construction (New South Wales)
🏢 Talent Right
📍 New South Wales