Senior Cost Manager (MEP)

Arcadis is the world's leading company delivering sustainable design, engineering, and consultancy solutions for natural and built assets.

We are more than 36,000 people, in over 70 countries, dedicated to improving quality of life. Everyone has an important role to play. With the power of many curious minds, together we can solve the world’s most complex challenges and deliver more impact together.

Role description

We’re expanding our Health, Life Science & Research Science Cost Management team and are looking for an experienced MEP Project Cost Consultant to join us. You’ll deliver a variety of projects, from large international programmes to smaller, high‑impact commissions for our national and global clients. 

Using your skills in cost management, planning, estimating and budgeting, you’ll develop cost plans, carry out feasibility studies and benchmarking, support procurement and tender evaluations, review contractor proposals, and manage contracts and variations through construction and handover. 

This is a great opportunity to provide specialist MEP commercial and quantity surveying support across the UK and Europe, with work concentrated around London, Oxford and Cambridge but opportunities across our wider network. You’ll be involved from early design (RIBA Stage 1) to completion, working with multi‑disciplinary teams, mentoring junior colleagues and helping us deliver projects on time and on budget.

Role accountabilities

• Provide MEP quantity surveying and commercial cost management across health, life science, research and related sectors.
• Prepare cost estimates, feasibility studies and benchmarking; develop and manage cost plans.
• Support procurement and tender evaluations; review and agree contractor proposals and manage contract variations.
• Deliver cost control through construction and handover; advise on value engineering and whole‑life cost where relevant.
• Work collaboratively across design, engineering and project teams and support development of junior staff.

Qualifications & Experience

• ARICS Quantity Surveyor or equivalent commercial/quantity surveying qualification; candidates with strong MEP commercial experience but different formal titles are welcome.
• Experience on medium to large construction projects; experience in research, life sciences or healthcare is a plus but not essential.
• Strong cost estimating skills and familiarity with rates, benchmarking and cost databases.
• Proven ability to manage projects from inception to completion and build effective client relationships.
• Comfortable using digital cost management tools such as CostX and 5D BIM; willingness to learn new systems encouraged.

Why Arcadis?

We can only achieve our goals when everyone is empowered to be their best. We believe everyone's contribution matters. It’s why we are pioneering a skills-based approach, where you can harness your unique experience and expertise to carve your career path and maximize the impact we can make together.

You’ll do meaningful work, and no matter what role, you’ll be helping to deliver sustainable solutions for a more prosperous planet. Make your mark, on your career, your colleagues, your clients, your life and the world around you.

Together, we can create a lasting legacy. Join Arcadis. Create a Legacy.

Our Commitment to Equality, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging

We want you to be able to bring your best self to work every day which is why we take equality and inclusion seriously and hold ourselves to account for our actions. Our ambition is to be an employer of choice and provide a great place to work for all our people. We believe that by working together diverse people with different experiences develop the most innovative ideas. Equality, diversity and inclusion is at the heart of how we improve quality of life and we work closely with our people across six ED&I Workstreams: Age, Disability, Faith, Gender, LGBT+ and Race. A diverse and skilled workforce is essential to our success.

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