M&A Integration Director

M&A Integration Director - London -

Be a part of the next big success story in the M&E design sector. My client is busy growing and acquiring MEP design consultancies across the UK. We require an integration director who ideally has previous experience working in the MEP or Engineering sector. You will be responsible on-boarding new acquisitions into the group to ensure the most smooth and successful integration. This role is all about taking founder / owners on a positive journey of integration into the group.

The Role

we are seeking an experienced Integration Director to lead the on-boarding, integration and transformation of every business acquired into the platform. The individual will be central to delivering our acquisition-led growth strategy and the cross-sell and synergy benefits that underpin the investment thesis. Reporting to the Group CFO in the near term, the Integration Director owns a structured 100-day onboarding programme and a 12-month integration roadmap for each acquisition, working in close partnership with the M&A team, the Group CFO, the incoming Group CEO, and the Managing Directors of acquired businesses.

Our acquisitions are typically founder-led businesses, many built over two decades or more, each with established ways of working. A defining feature of this role is the ability to navigate that context with credibility: setting group direction and standards while bringing people along, building consensus, and earning the trust of business leaders so that change is adopted rather than imposed. This is a transformation role as much as an integration role. Our platform strategy will continue to evolve with the pace and profile of the businesses acquired. The Integration Director will help shape the future operating model and target state while delivering the practical steps to get there, combining strong project management discipline with a strategic lens.

Key Responsibilities

Integration Planning and Execution Accountable: 100-day plan, 12-month roadmap, weekly integration governance • Design and deliver a structured 100-day onboarding plan for each acquired business, covering operational, systems, financial, commercial, cultural and people workstreams. • Develop and execute a 12-month integration roadmap to bring each business into alignment with group operating standards, KPIs and commercial targets, recognising that some milestones will extend beyond 100 days and need prioritising against wider group activity. • Facilitate weekly integration calls with acquired business leadership, the Group CFO, the M&A team and functional leads, maintaining clear agendas, actions and progress tracking. • Build and continuously improve the integration playbook, stripping it back to the core set of actions mandatory for every acquisition while tailoring deal-specific actions to diligence findings, so that each successive acquisition benefits from lessons learned. • Identify and escalate risks early, and drive issue resolution across workstreams to maintain pace and quality.

Systems and Technology Integration Consulted, partnering functional and technical leads: ERP, CRM, finance, Microsoft 365 • Coordinate migration of acquired businesses onto group core systems, including Deltek Vantagepoint (group ERP for project, billing and utilisation data), HubSpot (group CRM), the group finance and reporting platform, and the Microsoft 365 stack. • Sequence systems adoption sensibly: finance reporting as an immediate and compulsory requirement for group visibility, CRM adoption supported by a clear demonstration of the cross-sell benefit to each business, and ERP rolled out at a measured pace to avoid imposing unnecessary bureaucracy. • Support data migration and quality assurance across system transitions, including the move to timesheet and utilisation discipline where businesses do not already operate it. • Work with technical and functional leads to align acquired business technology with group architecture and standards, including the Deltek to HubSpot connection and project profitability reporting.

Commercial Integration and Synergy Realisation Responsible: cross-sell visibility, joint bidding enablement, synergy tracking • Establish visibility of client relationships across the group through CRM adoption, mapping shared and overlapping clients so that cross-sell and joint-selling opportunities can be identified and pursued. • Facilitate workshops with sales leads across businesses to map and standardise commercial processes, get teams talking, and broker introductions that unlock larger, multi-discipline bids. • Support incentive approaches that reward business leaders for introductions and collaboration, so that cross-sell is adopted as a benefit rather than seen as additional admin. • Define, tag and track synergy KPIs that can be measured reliably, such as cross-sell revenue and days to bill, working with functional teams who hold the day-to-day data while maintaining overall oversight.

Operational Integration and Operating Model Consulted: service delivery, target operating model, utilisation • Align working practices, service delivery processes and documentation to group standards across regional hubs. • Support the rollout of the group target operating model within each business, covering commercial, delivery and support functions, and help shape decisions on what is centralised, kept local, outsourced or offshored. • Drive utilisation, resource planning and project profitability discipline, identifying inefficiencies and improvement opportunities post-acquisition. • Standardise templates, processes and service-level expectations across acquired entities.

Transformation and Technology Adoption Responsible: transformation initiatives delivered through the integration window • Use the integration window to drive group transformation initiatives, including systems convergence, property and cost rationalisation, and adoption of best-of-breed tooling. • Identify and promote AI and automation tools that improve the workflows of acquired businesses, while managing the associated data, IP and professional indemnity considerations. • Contribute to the evolution of the platform operating model as the group scales, balancing where the group should go with how to bring people along.

Finance and Governance Integration Consulted, partnering the Group CFO and Financial Controller • Ensure acquired businesses transition to group financial reporting frameworks and month-end processes within agreed timelines, with management reporting available quickly even where full finance system migration takes longer. • Support alignment of chart of accounts, management accounts format and financial controls. • Coordinate finance team integration, including payroll, banking and statutory alignment. • Track financial integration milestones and flag risks to the Group CFO.

People and Culture Integration Consulted, partnering the fractional Chief People Officer • Coordinate people integration in collaboration with the Chief People Officer, including employment terms alignment, HR policy rollout and employee communications. • Support cultural integration, helping acquired teams connect with group values and ways of working, and helping shape career paths that allow people to work across companies and sectors. • Build relationships with founders and leaders, understanding how they prefer to work and navigating resistance constructively, including drawing on examples where integration has worked well elsewhere in the group. • Monitor employee sentiment and retention through the integration period and flag risks early.

M&A Interface Consulted: integration planning during the deal process • Work with the M&A team during the later stages of deal execution so that integration planning begins before completion. • Contribute to due diligence, ensuring operational, systems and commercial integration considerations are captured early, including diagnostic questions on commercial model, digital maturity and resource planning. • Build integration readiness materials for each deal based on pre-completion information.

Person Specification

Experience

• Proven track record of leading post-acquisition integration programmes in a fast-moving, multi-site environment, ideally within engineering or technical consultancy, professional services, or the built environment. • Experience in a private equity backed or acquisitive buy-and-build business, with exposure to multiple concurrent integrations. • Demonstrated ability to manage multi-workstream programmes across operational, systems, commercial, finance and people domains. • Experience building or contributing to integration playbooks, frameworks and governance standards from scratch. • Track record of navigating founder-led businesses and bringing established leaders along through change. • Comfortable engaging at senior level with Managing Directors of acquired businesses, the Group CFO, the M&A team and functional leads.

Skills and Personal Attributes • Exceptional project and programme management skills, highly organised with a structured, disciplined approach and a strategic lens. • Strong commercial acumen and the ability to connect integration activity to financial and strategic outcomes, particularly cross-sell and synergy realisation. • Confident, credible communicator able to build trust quickly and influence without authority, securing buy-in so that change is adopted rather than imposed. • Hands-on, pragmatic and delivery-focused, comfortable building processes from scratch and operating at pace. • Comfortable with ambiguity and an evolving platform strategy, and able to balance future direction with practical delivery. • Collaborative and empathetic, with the ability to manage the human dimension of post-acquisition change. • Working knowledge of ERP, CRM and finance systems and how to programme manage their implementation, with appetite to adopt AI and automation tools. • Willingness to travel regularly across UK group offices and acquired sites.

Qualifications

• Project or programme management qualification desirable (for example Prince2, MSP, Agile or PMP). • Relevant degree or equivalent professional experience. What This Role Offers • A rare opportunity to join an acquisitive sustainable buildings platform at the very beginning of its journey. • Direct exposure to senior leadership and to the Ansor private equity team. • The chance to build the integration and transformation function from scratch, with real ownership and autonomy. • A central role in delivering the cross-sell and synergy benefits at the heart of the investment thesis. • Significant career development as the group scales, with potential to step into a broader Integration and Transformation Director or other operational remit. • Competitive package including base salary, performance bonus and equity participation, commensurate with experience