I run retained construction executive search for Manchester and Greater Manchester from a base an hour up the road in Lancashire. The city has the largest construction pipeline outside London: student and residential towers, university campuses, the Town Hall restoration, the regional offices of every national contractor and the housebuilders' northern divisions. Senior appointments in construction, from Commercial Director to Managing Director, mapped properly and handled personally.
Construction Executive Search in Manchester
The city with the biggest pipeline outside London, and the leaders it needs.
What is being built
The pipeline is real and it is moving. Graham's £286 million, 2,302-bed Cambridge Halls student scheme has Building Safety Regulator sign-off to start main construction, and site hiring has begun. Graham and its partners have reached financial close on the £530 million redevelopment of the University of Manchester's Fallowfield campus, the largest single Passivhaus scheme in the world. Seddon has stepped in for Vistry on Salford's 144-home Ordsall scheme. Procure Partnerships and Wirral Council have named 53 contractors to a four-year, £1 billion North West framework covering building, infrastructure and demolition. The Town Hall restoration continues, and United Utilities' AMP8 programme is the largest in its history.
Every one of those creates senior vacancies at the contractor, the consultancy and the client, and most will be filled by someone in post at a competitor across the city today.
Manchester's senior seats change hands quietly
A £286 million tower clearing its last gate, a £530 million campus at financial close and a £1 billion framework opening create director vacancies before they create anything else.
The people who will fill them are in post across the city today.
Where the roles sit
Manchester searches arrive from the regional divisions of the national contractors, from the privately owned contractors that have grown into main contracting across Greater Manchester, from the building services contractors on the towers and campuses, from housebuilders and from the client side at the universities, the council and the NHS trusts. The roles are the ones on every page of this site: Commercial Director, Managing Director, Project Director and Pre-Construction Director, with Operations Director and Senior Commercial Manager alongside them.
An hour down the road, and in the office when it matters
I am based in Lancashire, an hour from the city, and Manchester briefs are taken in person: on site, in the regional office or over a table on Deansgate. The search then runs the same five stages it runs everywhere, brief, market map, direct approach, assessment and a managed offer, with a map that is shorter here because I know most of the names on it.
The wider region
Manchester is the centre of the North West market, not the whole of it. The Liverpool and Preston contractors, the civils and utilities businesses across Lancashire, Cumbria and Merseyside, and the Lancaster and Cumbria schemes are on the North West page. For searches elsewhere, see London and Scotland.
Common questions
Do you have an office in Manchester?
No, and I do not need one. I am based in Lancashire, an hour from the city, and I take every Manchester brief in person. What matters is the network, and the Manchester main contractors, the civils and utilities businesses around them and the client bodies on the city's schemes are where mine is deepest.
Which Manchester businesses do you recruit for?
The regional divisions of the Tier 1 contractors with Manchester offices, the privately owned contractors that have grown into main contracting across Greater Manchester, the housebuilders' northern regions, the M&E and building services contractors on the city's towers and campuses, and the client-side teams at the universities, the city council and the NHS trusts.
Which recent searches were in Manchester?
In 2026, a Planning Lead in Manchester for a national programme, and searches for contractors with regional offices across Greater Manchester. The wider North West work, from Lancaster to Liverpool, is on the North West page.
Which roles do you place in Manchester?
Commercial Director, Managing Director, Project Director, Pre-Construction Director and Operations Director for the regional businesses, Project Director and Senior Commercial Manager on the single major schemes, and the Estimator, Planner and Managing Quantity Surveyor appointments beneath them when a client retains me for those too.
Start a conversation
If you are appointing senior leadership in Manchester, I am close enough to come and take the brief this week. No hard sell, no obligation.
