Head of Operational Excellence

Had-Fab is a successful high-growth engineering business at the heart of the UK’s energy transition. Driven by accelerating demand across the UK’s energy infrastructure sector, including major grid reinforcement programmes and the transition to renewable and greener energy, we are continuing to scale at pace.

Against this backdrop, we are seeking a dynamic and delivery-focused Head of Operational Excellence (HOE) to play a key role in enabling our next phase of growth.

This is an exciting opportunity to join a business at a genuinely transformational point in its evolution. Reporting to the COO, the HOE will take ownership of capital investment programmes, infrastructure development, and operational improvement initiatives across the organisation. Your work will directly enhance productivity, efficiency, and scalability, ensuring we are fully equipped to meet increasing market demand.

Had-Fab is widely recognised as one of the UK’s leading structural engineering and fabrication specialists in the rapidly growing Power Transmission and Distribution sector. We also serve the Rail, Renewables, Civils & Infrastructure, Telecommunications, and Commercial & Industrial sectors. Established in 1993, we have built a strong reputation for delivering technically complex, large-scale projects from early-stage design and consultation through to manufacture, installation, and project delivery.

We are an agile and responsive business that is strongly customer-focused, with a consultative and collaborative approach to solving real problems for our clients.

This is a high-impact leadership role where you will work closely with the COO and senior leadership team to define and deliver the operational strategy required to support sustained growth. You will identify, prioritise, and execute improvement initiatives across engineering, manufacturing, and the wider operational landscape, bringing structure, rigour, and measurable performance improvement.

We are looking for a proven senior operational leader who brings:

• A commercial mindset and an ability to balance short-term operational needs with long-term growth plans
• A good understanding of operational excellence principles including Lean, OEE, Six Sigma and the use of data driven metrics
• Experience in capital project delivery, CAPEX tracking and infrastructure expansion
• Experience of working across multiple stakeholder groups
• A self-motivated, proactive approach, adaptable to new environments, with high integrity and discretion when handling sensitive business information
• An ability to influence across all parts of the business, making the case for improvement and change

This role represents a fantastic opportunity to join an established business at a period of exciting growth, to make a lasting impact and to meaningfully contribute to its success and future sustainability.