Decima International is a professional services company, providing project management and controls services to clients in the United States and the Middle East. Our mission is to become the premier professional services provider across all industry sectors we are engaged in. To accomplish this, Decima International’s founders established a simple yet powerful formula:
Approach each client engagement as a partnership, create an environment that attracts the most talented professionals and allows them to flourish, and regulate growth to maintain excellence in our service standards.
We are seeking an experienced and commercially focused EPC Procurement Lead to lead EPC pre-qualification, tendering, bid evaluation, and procurement support activities for large-scale construction and mission-critical projects in Dubai, UAE. This client-facing role requires strong technical, commercial, procurement, and stakeholder management capabilities, with a focus on ensuring that EPC procurement activities are structured, competitive, compliant, and aligned with project objectives.
The ideal candidate will have a background in Quantity Surveying, Engineering, Procurement, Construction Management, or a related discipline, with proven experience leading EPC pre-qualification and bid evaluation for large-scale data center or comparable projects with significant capital expenditure.
You will play a key role in supporting the successful procurement of EPC contractors and major project packages by managing pre-qualification processes, coordinating technical and commercial evaluations, supporting tender governance, and helping ensure the selection of capable, compliant, and commercially competitive bidders.
RESPONSIBILITIES
- Lead EPC procurement activities, including contractor pre-qualification, tender planning, bid evaluation, clarification management, and award recommendation support.
- Develop and manage pre-qualification strategies, evaluation criteria, bidder questionnaires, scoring matrices, and contractor assessment documentation.
- Coordinate the evaluation of EPC contractors based on technical capability, financial strength, project experience, HSE performance, quality systems, delivery capacity, and commercial competitiveness.
- Lead or support tendering activities for large-scale EPC packages, including tender documentation, bidder communications, clarification logs, addenda, and tender submission tracking.
- Coordinate with project management, engineering, commercial, contracts, cost, planning, legal, and client stakeholders to ensure procurement requirements are clearly defined and properly evaluated.
- Manage technical and commercial bid evaluation processes, ensuring alignment between evaluation teams and consistency across scoring, comments, clarifications, and recommendations.
- Review EPC contractor submissions, including qualifications, assumptions, exclusions, pricing, schedules, delivery plans, procurement strategies, staffing plans, and risk registers.
- Prepare bid comparison sheets, evaluation reports, recommendations for award documents, procurement trackers, and executive summaries for client and leadership review.
- Lead clarification meetings, bidder interviews, commercial alignment discussions, and negotiation support sessions.
- Identify procurement, commercial, technical, schedule, contractual, and delivery risks within pre-qualification and bid submissions.
- Support risk mitigation strategies by working with contracts, legal, cost, and technical teams to address commercial exposure, scope gaps, pricing inconsistencies, and contractual deviations.
- Ensure procurement activities are conducted in a fair, transparent, compliant, and properly documented manner.
- Support the development and review of EPC procurement packages, scopes of work, pricing schedules, contract exhibits, and evaluation templates.
- Coordinate with cost management teams to validate bid pricing, benchmark submissions, and support budget alignment.
- Maintain accurate procurement records, pre-qualification files, bid evaluation documentation, approval records, correspondence, and decision logs.
- Support procurement reporting, tender dashboards, bidder status updates, and procurement progress reviews.
- Guide project teams on EPC procurement best practices, bidder evaluation, procurement governance, and commercial risk management.
- Perform other related duties as required and assigned.
QUALIFICATIONSRequired qualifications
- 12+ years of experience in EPC procurement, tender management, procurement management, commercial management, quantity surveying, contracts, or construction procurement within large-scale construction, infrastructure, industrial, or mission-critical projects.
- Bachelor’s degree in Quantity Surveying, Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Procurement, Supply Chain, Construction Management, or a related field.
- Proven experience leading EPC pre-qualification and bid evaluation processes.
- Experience leading EPC procurement activities for at least 2 data centers or comparable large-scale projects with CapEx exceeding USD 50M per site.
- Strong understanding of EPC procurement models, contractor pre-qualification, tendering procedures, bid evaluation, commercial analysis, and procurement governance.
- Experience developing pre-qualification criteria, bidder evaluation matrices, scoring systems, bid comparison sheets, and recommendations for award documentation.
- Strong ability to review technical and commercial submissions, pricing schedules, exclusions, assumptions, deviations, delivery plans, and contractor qualifications.
- Experience coordinating with multidisciplinary stakeholders, including project management, engineering, cost, planning, legal, contracts, procurement, commercial, and client representatives.
- Strong understanding of construction procurement, EPC contracting, contract risk allocation, scope definition, pricing structures, payment terms, variations, claims, and performance obligations.
- Ability to identify procurement risks, bidder limitations, commercial gaps, scope omissions, pricing inconsistencies, and contractual exposure.
- Strong communication, negotiation, leadership, and stakeholder management skills.
- Excellent written and verbal English fluency.
- Strong analytical and organizational skills with excellent attention to detail.
- Ability to manage multiple procurement packages, deadlines, bidder communications, and stakeholder inputs in a fast-paced project environment.
- Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite, particularly Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
Preferred qualifications
- Experience working on data center, hyperscale, mission-critical, industrial, infrastructure, or large-scale commercial building projects.
- Experience working in a PMC, owner’s representative, consultant, developer, client-side procurement, or major contractor environment.
- Previous experience working in Dubai, the UAE, or the wider GCC region.
- Strong knowledge of FIDIC-based contracts, EPC contract structures, tender governance, and commercial risk management.
- Master’s degree in Engineering, Construction Management, Quantity Surveying, Procurement, Supply Chain, Commercial Management, or a related field.
- Professional certifications or memberships such as CIPS, MRICS, RICS, PMP, AACE, or equivalent.
- Knowledge of regional EPC contractor markets, supplier capability, procurement routes, and UAE/GCC construction delivery models.
- Experience using procurement, contract management, cost management, or document control platforms such as Aconex, Procore, Oracle Primavera Cloud, SAP, or similar systems.
- Arabic language capability is preferred but not required.
POSITION DETAILS
- Location (On-site): Dubai, United Arab Emirates
- Position: EPC Procurement Lead
- Position Classification: Salary-based full-time hours
Decima International is an Equal Opportunity Employer that is committed to the safety and well-being of all. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, creed, color, national origin, ancestry, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, or medical conditions related to pregnancy, childbirth, or breastfeeding), age, medical condition, marital or domestic partner status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression and transgender status, mental disability or physical disability, genetic information, military or veteran status, citizenship, low-income status or any other status or characteristic protected by applicable law.
