SYSTRA is a distinguished engineering and consulting firm, globally acknowledged for its infrastructure and mobility solutions.
SYSTRA is a distinguished engineering and consulting firm, globally acknowledged for its infrastructure and mobility solutions.
Within the UK, SYSTRA have an established reputation in infrastructure consultancy with most of their revenues to date deriving from engineering and design services in the rail sector.
SYSTRA required an executive search approach to secure a Market Director within their Energy division.
This was a newly created role within the business, essential for spearheading growth initiatives to diversify from the rail sector, with this role focused on the Energy sector.
The key motivations for recruiting this role were to build up major projects markets in adjacent sectors to rail, where SYSTRA could use their transferable skills and capability to support the development of renewable energy projects, hydrogen networks, electricity transmission and distribution systems and related infrastructure.
This role therefore provided a unique opportunity to design and deliver the growth strategy for an emerging market.
The successful candidate would need to build and manage relationships with key stakeholders, contractors, and industry partners. As this was a newly created position, the client needed an extremely experienced candidate to come in with a proven track record of sales, bid management, and project delivery in energy.
The brief was quite open for this role, the successful candidate could come from a consultancy, contractor or client-side position. The key to succeeding in this role was depth of knowledge across the energy sector and a strong network of contacts.
When conducting our research, we focused on individuals who were likely to have experience of leading growth and business development within electricity transmission and distribution or renewable energy infrastructure.
Candidates were assessed using competency-based interviewing to determine whether they had the business development skillset to rapidly grow a market from the ground up. Candidates also needed to demonstrate that they had the breadth of energy sector experience required to succeed in this position.
The main challenge for this particular role, was finding candidates with a broad enough knowledge of the energy market and not a singular focus on a small part of the overall market.
From a longlist of 58, Newsom Consulting presented a shortlist of 5 candidates, with 40% of the shortlist being from historically underrepresented backgrounds. The successful candidate had 26 years of experience 20 years of experience in the energy sector, specializing in nuclear projects, energy transition, and infrastructure development.
