Legal Counsel (Construction UK Qualified)

📋 Description

• • Step into the driving seat of Hyphen Connect’s UK construction legal practice, owning every facet of legal risk across a fast-growing portfolio of major projects valued in excess of £500 million. You will be the sole in-house counsel for the region, reporting directly to the executive leadership team and influencing strategic decisions from board level to site level.
• • Draft, negotiate, and close a continuous pipeline of construction and engineering contracts—JCT Design & Build, NEC3/4 ECC & PSC, FIDIC Red & Yellow Books, bespoke EPC, framework, supply-chain, and professional-services agreements—ensuring terms lock in margin, allocate risk intelligently, and align with the company’s aggressive growth targets.
• • Provide real-time, pragmatic advice to project directors, commercial managers, and site teams from pre-qualification through final account, translating complex legal issues into clear, actionable guidance that keeps schemes on programme and within budget while preserving key relationships.
• • Design and maintain a scalable contract-management ecosystem: build clause libraries, negotiation playbooks, and approval matrices that empower non-lawyers to self-serve on low-risk matters while escalating only what truly needs senior legal input.
• • Lead end-to-end management of all contentious matters—adjudication, arbitration, litigation, and mediation—selecting and instructing external counsel where required, managing budgets tightly, and driving strategies that defend the company’s position without burning commercial bridges.
• • Monitor and interpret the rapidly evolving UK construction regulatory landscape—Building Safety Act 2022, CDM 2015, planning reforms, ESG requirements, and health-and-safety updates—translating changes into concise guidance and training for remote and site-based teams.
• • Partner with finance, insurance, and risk teams to structure project-specific policies (Contractors’ All-Risk, Professional Indemnity, environmental, latent defects) and ensure indemnities, warranties, and bonds dovetail with internal risk appetite and client expectations.
• • Champion a culture of compliance and ethical contracting across the organisation by delivering bite-sized training modules on contract administration, record-keeping, and dispute avoidance, measured through quarterly KPIs and audit results.
• • Support high-value strategic bids and joint ventures by conducting legal due diligence, drafting shareholder agreements, and advising on corporate structures that optimise tax, liability, and governance outcomes.
• • Present concise legal dashboards to the executive leadership team that quantify exposure, track claim trends, and demonstrate how proactive legal input safeguards EBITDA and enhances enterprise value.
• • Act as the ethical compass of the organisation, embedding modern-slavery, bribery, and sustainability obligations into procurement criteria and subcontractor onboarding processes.
• • Continuously improve the legal function: benchmark external counsel fees, pilot cutting-edge legal-tech solutions (e-signature platforms, AI contract-review tools), and refine playbooks so the legal team scales faster than the project pipeline.
• • Build and nurture a high-performing external counsel panel, negotiating fee arrangements that deliver value without compromising quality, and maintaining relationships that can be activated at short notice for emergency injunctions or high-stakes disputes.
• • Collaborate with international colleagues in Singapore and the Middle East to ensure cross-border consistency in risk allocation, compliance standards, and brand reputation.