Head of Pre-Construction

What You’ll Do We're looking for an experienced Head of Pre-Construction to lead the strategy, governance and planning activities that shape how Primark delivers projects across its global store estate. In this role, you'll define and embed a consistent pre-construction approach across new stores, refurbishments and major investment programmes, ensuring projects are commercially viable, fully risk-assessed and positioned for successful delivery. You'll play a critical role in supporting investment decisions and driving the standards, processes and governance that underpin our property pipeline. Working closely with Property, Construction, Finance and Operations teams, you'll bring together programme planning, cost management, design, feasibility and tendering into a single aligned strategy. You'll provide leadership across architecture, quantity surveying and feasibility functions, ensuring projects are planned with cost certainty, robust programmes and effective risk management while supporting Primark's long-term growth ambitions. You'll also lead the ongoing development of the GURU platform, ensuring it remains the single source of truth for project planning, reporting and decision-making across the portfolio. Working with senior leaders across the business, you'll lead a high-performing team and play a key role in shaping the future of Primark's global property investment programme. In your role, you’ll collaborate with different people across a range of skillsets. Here’s a flavour of your day-to-day: • Lead and oversee Primark's pre-construction activities across new stores, refurbishments and major capital projects, ensuring schemes are set up for successful delivery. • Drive the development of tender submissions and delivery strategies, ensuring alignment with commercial objectives, programme requirements and risk considerations. • Oversee estimating, cost planning and benchmarking activities, ensuring cost certainty, transparency and value throughout the project lifecycle. • Lead design coordination during pre-construction, ensuring proposals are fully developed, buildable and aligned to operational and commercial requirements. • Provide strategic guidance on feasibility, programme planning and delivery approaches, supporting key investment and project approval decisions. • Build and maintain strong relationships with landlords, consultants and professional partners, ensuring the right expertise is in place to support project success. • Identify and manage key commercial, design and delivery risks, implementing robust governance and mitigation strategies from the earliest project stages. • Champion quality, sustainability and continuous improvement across the pre-construction function, ensuring projects are delivered efficiently and with a right-first-time approach. What You’ll Bring   We want every person in our organisation to feel like they’re making a key contribution. Here are some of the experiences and skills you’ll need for the role: • 10+ years' pre-construction experience, with a proven track record of delivering commercially robust and operationally viable solutions. • 5+ years’ operating at Head of or senior leadership level within a complex retail, property, construction or multi-site environment. • Extensive experience leading feasibility, planning, cost management, design coordination and tendering activities across a diverse project portfolio. • Demonstrated success delivering projects ranging from smaller works programmes to large-scale capital investments exceeding £20m. • Strong stakeholder management skills, with the ability to build trusted relationships and influence at Executive level, as well as across external consultants and partners. • Experience establishing governance, standards