Business Line Project Delivery and Commercial Director

Our business is built on projects. Managing projects successfully is core to how we serve our clients and how we function as a business. Project Managers have a lot of competing demands between being responsive to their clients, managing their teams, ensuring high quality work, and safeguarding profitability of the project. Helping our PMs and their projects be successful is the single greatest lever we have to grow our business, keep winning exciting projects and deliver on our performance expectations.

About the role

The Project Delivery and Commercial Director is responsible for driving project delivery, commercial management, and quality performance excellence across the business, ensuring strong financial, operational, contractual, risk, technical quality, and client outcomes across the full project lifecycle—from opportunity development through execution and closeout. This role partners closely with Project Managers, Operations Leaders, Finance, Business Development, US Project Governance and Execution team, Legal, Quality, Safety, and technical leaders to ensure projects are set up for success, commercial and quality risks are proactively identified and managed, and delivery performance meets or exceeds expectations.

The Project Delivery/Commercial Director is responsible for the implementation of U.S. project delivery processes, procedures and governances throughout the business and liaising with the U.S. Director of Project Governance & Execution. This position can sit in any WSP office in the USA.

Responsibilities

• Project Delivery Leadership:
  • Collaborate with the Project Governance & Execution Director to develop and deploy training that supports successful project management
  • Develop and lead a project delivery team to support project managers in all regions to better bid and deliver projects
  • Review the performance of our Project Managers regularly to determine who needs additional support, training or replacement
  • Review the performance of our Project Directors regularly to ensure project performance targets are being achieved and to determine who needs additional support, training or replacement
  • Communicate new policies and directives to project managers and ensure adoption
  • Continuously monitor KPIs on project delivery such as margin erosion and DLM
  • Assist newly acquired groups in adopting our project delivery protocols, incorporating their best practices, and working to ensure that their project data successfully migrates into WSP
  • Deploy GCC to assist in effective project management and improving our margins
• Commercial Management:
  • Lead and support contract review and compliance in partnership with Legal, Commercial, Finance, and Operations teams
  • Support commercial terms negotiation, including risk allocation, limitation of liability, indemnity, consequential damages, liquidated damages, payment terms, and other material contractual provisions
  • Identify, allocate, and manage project commercial risks across the project lifecycle, ensuring risks are visible, owned, and actively mitigated
  • Develop and oversee risk mitigation, recovery, and contingency management plans for projects with elevated commercial, delivery, or financial exposure
  • Strengthen change management discipline, including timely identification, documentation, pricing, approval, and recovery of scope, schedule, and cost changes
  • Partner with Legal and Operations to support claims avoidance, claims preparation, dispute resolution, and commercial recovery strategies
  • Provide governance and oversight for subconsultant and subcontractor commercial management, including flow-down terms, performance issues, change management, and claims support
  • Lead or support RDOA submission and approval processes for projects requiring elevated commercial, financial, or governance review
  • Monitor and enforce Work at Risk governance to ensure project teams do not proceed without appropriate authorization, documentation, and approvals
• Quality Management:
  • Champion quality management across project delivery, ensuring QA/QC expectations are clearly defined, planned, executed, and documented throughout the project lifecycle
  • Ensure appropriate QA/QC checks, independent technical reviews, and design reviews are built into project plans, schedules, budgets, and delivery workflows
  • Partner with technical leaders and Quality teams to implement and reinforce the Technical Assurance Process on projects with elevated technical, client, regulatory, or delivery risk
  • Support Project Managers in aligning scope, deliverables, review protocols, and acceptance criteria with client expectations at project kickoff and through execution
  • Monitor quality-related performance trends, including rework, technical review findings, client concerns, and delivery issues, and drive corrective action where needed
  • Capture and share lessons learned related to project delivery, technical quality, client expectations, and commercial outcomes to improve future performance
  • Support client satisfaction surveys and follow-up actions to ensure feedback is reviewed, acted upon, and incorporated into continuous improvement efforts
• Opportunity / Pursuit Phase:
  • Participate in Go/No-Go reviews to support informed decision-making
  • Support proposal delivery strategy, pricing, and risk mitigation
  • Partner with Legal, Commercial, Finance, and Operations teams to support contract review, commercial terms negotiation, risk allocation, pricing strategy, and pursuit-stage mitigation planning
• Planning Phase:
  • Lead Project Readiness Reviews
  • Ensure robust planning, resourcing, risk management, contingency planning, and commercial governance before project execution begins
  • Integrate quality and safety planning into execution, including QA/QC checks, independent technical reviews, design reviews, and technical assurance requirements
• Project Execution & Performance Excellence:
  • Manage project reviews methodology ensuring proper audience and cadence
  • Participate in project performance reviews (milestones, cost, schedule, risk, margin)
  • Drive corrective action and recovery plans
  • Hold teams accountable for performance outcomes
  • Monitor change order discipline and Work at Risk governance in compliance with required approval processes
  • Work with leadership, Legal, and Commercial teams to support claims avoidance, dispute resolution, and recovery strategies
  • Provide subconsultant and subcontractor management support, including commercial terms, performance issues, changes, claims, and flow-down obligations
  • Drive standardization of delivery processes
  • Share best practices and drive continuous improvement
  • Use lessons learned, client feedback, and quality performance trends to strengthen project delivery processes and reduce repeat issues

Requirements

• 15+ years of experience in project delivery or operations leadership; recent project management experience preferable
• Proven track record delivering complex projects
• Strong commercial acumen, including pricing, contracts, margins, risk allocation, change management, claims avoidance, and recovery planning
• Strong understanding of quality management practices, including QA/QC planning, independent technical reviews, design reviews, technical assurance, lessons learned, and client satisfaction feedback loops
• Experience working in a matrixed organization
• Ability to improve performance and drive accountability

Internal Candidate Considerations

• Demonstrated track record of driving project performance
• Strong alignment with WSP delivery, commercial management, quality management, risk, RDOA, technical assurance, and governance processes
• Ability to encourage and influence Project Directors and Project Managers
• Experience leading cross-regional initiatives or major project portfolios

Benefits

WSP provides a comprehensive suite of benefits focused on providing health and financial stability throughout the employee’s career. These benefits include:

• Coverage related to medical, dental, vision, disability, and life
• Retirement savings
• Paid sick leave
• Paid vacation (or other personal time)
• Paid parental leave
• Paid time off for purposes of bereavement, voting, and/or attendance at naturalization proceedings

Pay

Expected Salary (all locations): $190,000 - $333,000

Expected Salary (Colorado only): $205,000 - $313,000

About WSP

WSP USA is the U.S. operating company of WSP, one of the world's leading engineering and professional services firms. Dedicated to serving local communities, we are engineers, planners, technical experts, strategic advisors and construction management professionals. WSP USA designs lasting solutions in the buildings, transportation, energy, water and environment markets. With more than 15,000 employees in over 300 offices across the U.S., we partner with our clients to help communities prosper. WSP provides a flexible and agile workplace model while meeting client needs.