About The Role
Job Title: Commercial Manager (Pre-Contract Work Winning)
Location: Basingstoke
Reports to: Head of Pre-Contract Commercial & Estimating
Company: Balfour Beatty Living Places
About Us
A Unique Commercial Role Driving Our Future Success
At Balfour Beatty Living Places (BBLP), we shape the communities of tomorrow through long-term partnerships that improve highways, infrastructure, and public spaces. This is your opportunity to join our Work Winning team — a specialist, high-impact function dedicated to securing the projects that power our business.
This is no ordinary Commercial Manager role. You’ll be at the heart of our bidding and tendering process, blending commercial acumen with innovation, creativity, and strategic thinking.
Your mission: develop winning solutions that deliver both competitive pricing and sustainable margins — all while ensuring compliance with Balfour Beatty governance.
What you'll be doing
Role Details
- Lead commercial strategy on bids, ensuring proposals are innovative, competitive, and aligned with client needs.
- Manage the legal and commercial aspects of tenders, balancing “top-down” winning price strategies with “bottom-up” cost analysis.
- Bring fresh thinking to pricing models, operational delivery, supply chain use, project planning, and margin recovery.
- Collaborate across Operations, Procurement, Estimating, and Design teams to create compelling, fully-informed bid submissions.
- Ensure all bids follow BB governance processes to the highest standard and within tight deadlines.
- Present proposals to clients and internal stakeholders in a clear, confident, and persuasive manner.
- Build and maintain strong client relationships to gain insight into needs, priorities, and decision-making drivers.
- Oversee tender risk and opportunities registers, ensuring strategies are in place to maximise success.
- Coordinate with the Proposals team to produce high-scoring, visually engaging submissions that stand out.
Who we're looking for
Essential Experience & Skills
- Proven experience as a Commercial Manager working on large-scale bids or tenders.
- Strong track record of innovative pricing and proposal development that outperforms competitors.
- Ability to engage cross-functional teams to meet challenging deadlines without compromising quality.
- Broad commercial knowledge with an understanding of technical and design considerations.
- Exceptional time management, organisation, and attention to detail.
- Resilience and determination to thrive in a fast-paced bidding environment.
Desirable
- Background in highway infrastructure maintenance or scheme delivery.
- Degree or equivalent in a commercial or related discipline.
Why Join Us
This role offers a rare chance to directly influence the future pipeline of BBLP, working on strategic, high-value bids with lasting impact on local communities. You’ll collaborate with some of the best minds in the business, enjoy professional development opportunities, and be part of a company that values collaboration, innovation, and trust.
Professional and personal development
The size and scale of Balfour Beatty coupled with our strong pipeline of work provides incredible opportunities, regardless of what stage you are at in your career.
We encourage and empower our employees to take control of their career and explore which part of the business they want to work in and what role is right for them. We actively encourage our managers and employees to have open communication throughout the year about wellbeing, development and career opportunities.
We're proud of the Balfour Beatty Academy. Whether it’s sharpening your technical expertise, improving your personal skills or seeking support to become professionally qualified, our 70:20:10* approach to development means we have a learning approach that suits everyone.
- 70% learning on the job, 20% learning from those around you, and 10% formal training courses and learning events.
For further information about Balfour Beatty Regional Scotland please go to www.balfourbeatty.com/careers/Scotland - You can also check out further job opportunities in the careers section
Why work for us
Day in, day out, our teams deliver some of the UK’s most ambitious, exciting and meaningful projects; developing, building and maintaining the vital infrastructure that supports national economies and strengthens communities.
Why join us?
Benefits
As if contributing to and supporting work that makes life better for millions wasn’t rewarding enough, we offer a full range of benefits too. You’ll have the freedom to shape the package that’s right for you and your life. Here are some of our key benefits:
- Smart working, giving you more flexibility such as staggered start and finish times, with up to 40% remote working, where roles allow.
- 25 days paid annual leave (pro rata)
- Family friendly policies which include 28 weeks full pay for maternity/adoption leave and four weeks full pay for paternity/partners leave
- Pension, share incentive plan, volunteering leave, recognition schemes and much more…
About Us
Balfour Beatty Living Places works in long-term partnerships with local authorities to create great places to live, work and play. We actively engage with local people to understand the needs of the communities we work in and shape the places where local economies can thrive and grow. As a leader in sustainable working, diversity, and social value, we use our expertise to bring real, positive change for our customers.
Diversity and inclusion
At Balfour Beatty we believe that diversity and inclusion are essential components of any successful, happy workplace. Through our Value Everyone Diversity and Inclusion Strategy and Action Plan, we are growing our diverse workforce and developing our inclusive culture where everyone is able to thrive and reach their full potential, regardless of their identity or background. To find out how we are making this a reality, visit www.balfourbeatty.com/diversityandinclusion
To help and support us with our desired commitment to create an inclusive culture we are members of WISE, enei, Business Disability Forum and the Association for Black and Minority Ethnic Engineers (AFBE). In 2020, we signed the Audeliss and Involve Open Letter to demonstrate our commitment to taking key long term and sustainable actions on Black Inclusion. Balfour Beatty is also a Gold Award holder in the Ministry of Defence 'Employer Recognition Scheme' and actively encourage applications from Armed Forces personnel, veterans and reservists.
As a Disability Confident Employer, we are committed to working with people who have disabilities and long-term health conditions to remove barriers for them in obtaining employment. We are also committed to offering applicants with a disability an interview if they meet the minimum requirements for the role. For more info, visit: https://disabilityconfident.campaign.gov.uk/
We are looking to continually improve our resourcing process and ensure that it is fair and inclusive for all. If you have any feedback on the process, please share this with us at:
[email protected] 
