Senior Commercial Manager

Senior Commercial Manager
Equinix is the world’s digital infrastructure company, operating 240+ data centers across the globe and providing interconnections to all the key clouds and networks. Businesses need one place to simplify and bring together fragmented, complex infrastructure that spans private and public cloud environments. Our global platform allows customers to place infrastructure wherever they need it and connect it to everything they need to succeed.

We are a fast-growing global company with 20 years of continuous growth. Through our innovative portfolio of high-performance products and services, we have created the largest, most active global ecosystem of 10,000+ companies, including 2,100 networks and 3,000+ cloud and IT service providers in 32 countries spanning six continents.

A career at Equinix means you will collaborate on work that impacts the world and be surrounded by endless opportunities to learn new skills and grow in varied directions. We embrace diversity in thought and contribution and are committed to providing an equitable work environment. that is foundational to our core values as a company and is vital to our success.

**Job Summary**
- This position reports directly to the EMEA South Retail Commercial Management Director, Global Design & Construction
- The primary focus of the role is commercial management oversight across Equinix’s portfolio major expansion construction projects throughout EMEA. Specifically, this role covers the Africa Capex Expansion projects
- The position works closely with other internal project teams. Including Design, Construction, Procurement (including Major Capital Equipment (MCE) Purchasing), Finance, PMO, Finance, Legal and Corporate Development
- The role is expected to provide proactive strategic and day-to-day leadership specifically focused to drive down construction costs, provide assurance against internal financial controls and reporting processes and help manage all major contract risks

**Responsibilities**
- Pre-Contract
- Procurement of third-party consultants including Design, Commercial and Pre-Construction Services
- Development of detailed Request for Proposals (RFP) and service deliverables for the commercial management services
- Day to day management of third-party commercial consultants to ensure deliverables are met in a timely manner and to a high standard
- Development of General Contractor and supplier procurement strategies in conjunction with the Construction Management (CM) team
- Working with Legal and Procurement Centre of Excellence (COE) to prepare General Contractor Contracts including negotiation of Contract terms
- Collation and presentation of market insights for the construction industry in the relevant country including market activity, comparative builds, construction cost indices, key suppliers and benchmarking information
- Preparation of budgets for all design stages including feasibility estimation, detailed cost modelling, benchmarking analysis and presentation of this to senior management throughout funding approval stages
- Ensure that all cost data is prepared and presented in the Equinix WBS
- Input and action of Value Engineering (VE) exercises at all stages of design. The output must be clear cost evaluation to support decision making
- Prepare annual and quarterly cashflow forecasts for active and pipeline projects
- Prepare and oversee monthly reports for budget, cashflow, risk and change management
- Post Contract
- Day to day management of third-party commercial consultants to ensure deliverables are met in a timely manner and to a high standard
- Monitor adherence against budget throughout the project lifespan including cost checks and reviews, value engineering and cost saving initiatives and evaluation of alternates
- Oversee and provide guidance on commercial change management and change evaluation efforts on all projects
- Monitor and report monthly and quarterly on project portfolio cash flow for the region
- Provide Construction in Place (CIP) data to Finance
- Pro-actively lead all commercial risk management efforts including commercial audits, contingency analyses, risk identification and analyses and management training
- Prepare and oversee monthly cost reports for budget, cashflow, risk and change management
- Monitor the financial close-out on all projects including settlement of all vendors
- Prepare lessons learned cost analysis and detailed Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) analysis of outturn costs

**Qualifications**
- Bachelors degree in construction, business, financial or related field
- Proven experience in a related function for projects in Africa
- Preferably Data Center / strong MEP experience
- Preferably RICS accreditation
- Must be detail orientated, with accurate input and proof-reading skills
- Must be able to handle multiple tasks in a fast-paced environment
- Must have strong business acumen
- Must have strong written and verbal communication skills
- Must