Senior Finance Manager

Colas Ltd are a UK subsidiary of the global Colas Group, which operates in over 50 countries worldwide and employs over 55,000 people including over 1500 in the UK across multiple sites. We are specialists in highways construction and have been involved in large-scale UK and international construction projects within the highways, airfields, and marine sectors as well as offering highways maintenance services and manufacturing our own innovative surfacing products. We hold a 'Gold Investor in People' award for continuously developing and rewarding our employees, offering excellent career potential.

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Purpose of the role

We are recruiting for a Senior Finance Manager to support our growing Asset Management workstream. Our Asset Management teams are industry leaders, delivering full lifecycle services—from survey, design, and concept through to construction and maintenance—on high-profile projects across the UK. The Senior Finance Manager plays a pivotal role in driving financial performance, managing budgets, and delivering high‑quality financial insight to support strategic decision-making. This is a highly influential role requiring strong analytical skills, stakeholder engagement, and the ability to work independently across multidisciplinary teams.

Main Responsibilities

In this role, you will be responsible for driving contract financial control and reporting, ensuring that financial insights highlight opportunities to improve profitability. You will work collaboratively with Project Management, Commercial teams, and the Commercial Finance Manager to ensure accurate reporting across work in progress, measure reserves, stocks, accruals, remedial provisions, risks, opportunities, and debt. Maintaining strong oversight of cash flow forecasting and debt collection is central to the role, as is building effective relationships across the business to champion the finance function and promote best practice. You will influence system and process decisions to ensure they meet clients' needs and Group requirements, while maintaining full compliance with Group accounting policies. You will also prepare accurate monthly management accounts with a strong emphasis on quarter-end and year-end reporting, consolidate and analyse results for the Cheshire West & Cheshire Contract, and support budgeting, three‑year planning, and reforecasting cycles. The role also includes monitoring overheads, provisions, and capital expenditure, producing business cases for investment decisions, ensuring all costs are accurately allocated, coordinating sales invoicing and payroll entry, and completing all required accruals, costings and general ledger journals. Additionally, you will provide line management, coaching, and support to a team comprising one Finance Manager and two Finance Assistants.

Ideal Candidate

The ideal candidate will be a fully qualified accountant (CIMA, ACCA, ACA or equivalent) with at least ten years of post‑qualification experience within the construction or infrastructure services sector. You will be highly analytical with substantial experience using data mining tools and advanced Excel capability, including pivot tables and lookups. Strong project management skills are essential, along with the ability to organise and prioritise your workload effectively. You will be confident working independently and using your initiative, and will bring the communication and influencing skills needed to work successfully with both financial and non‑financial stakeholders. The ability to build trusted relationships, challenge constructively, and provide credible financial insight is key to excelling in this role.

Package Description

Here at Colas, we offer a great total compensation package, including:

• A salary of £70,000 and £80,000 - PLUS Company Car/Car Allowance
• Our Colas Pension Scheme has combined contributions of up to 10%
• Life Assurance Scheme which is x4 basic salary
• 25 days annual leave per year + Public Holidays