Practice Manager- Community

Position Summary

The Practice Manager drives growth by cultivating strong client relationships, expanding account opportunities, and maintaining a robust sales pipeline. This role leads client engagement, identifies new business prospects, and ensures successful solution delivery that supports long term partnerships. Serving as the primary client contact, the Practice Manager proactively manages expectations, uncovers emerging needs, and collaborates with sector leadership to position the practice for sustained expansion. They help qualify leads, shape proposals, and support pursuit strategies aligned with sector priorities, with responsibilities potentially focused on a specific geography or market segment.

Beyond client engagement, the Practice Manager applies solid project management skills to ensure work is delivered on time, within scope, and aligned with client objectives. They oversee planning, monitor progress, manage risks, and coordinate resources to maintain high quality outcomes that encourage repeat business. While they may guide production staff as needed, the role centers on relationship management, opportunity development, and strengthening the practice’s market presence. This role is highly matrixed and may include accountabilities to all members of the Sector Leadership team for their sector. This position may be a part-time or full-time role based on the needs of the practice.

Essential Job Functions & Accountabilities

Operations

• Maintain efficient practice operations that support strong client delivery and revenue growth. 
• Monitor workload, resource allocation, and project timelines to ensure commitments are met.
• Implement and refine processes that improve consistency, quality, and responsiveness across engagements.
• Partner with sector leadership to align operational priorities with business development goals.
• Track key performance indicators (KPIs) related to pipeline health, client activity, and project execution.
• Other duties as assigned. 

Employee Engagement & Teamwork

• Practices effective employee relations and personnel management within the practice.
• Teams with engineering managers to align appropriate training, development, and mentoring of talent.
• Coordinates with project development and technical development teams to ensure proper staffing and execution of projects.
• Communicates opportunities and gaps in employee development to practice and sector leadership.

• Collaborates with organizational, sector, practice, and/or office leadership to foster an engaged, dynamic employee culture and lead company-wide events and initiatives.

Client Experience

• Manages client relationships, especially within their geographical region or market segment, as requested by Practice Director. 
• Maintains knowledge and presence within the industry to contribute to project pursuits.

• Assists Practice Director and marketing staff to generate proposals and determine a profitable fee structure that aligns with the practice strategy.
• Ensure delivery teams understand client objectives and consistently meet or exceed expectations.
• Lead client communications, expectation setting, and issue resolution throughout the engagement lifecycle.

Project Management

• Oversee project planning, scope definition, timelines, and resource coordination to ensure successful delivery.
• Monitor project progress, risks, and dependencies, escalating issues when needed to maintain client satisfaction.
• Ensure projects are delivered on time, within scope, and aligned with client goals and quality standards

• Serves as Project Manager for critical clients and projects within the practice, as needed.

Core Competencies

Communication

• Keeps others well informed and prioritizes audiences, accuracy, and timeliness.
• Facilitates an efficient, consistent workflow and exchange of information.
• Adjusts communication based on needs and make-up of audience.

Integrity

• Leads by example, challenges assumptions, and creates candid feedback loops.
• Aligns personal actions and words, extends and receives trust, and upholds commitments.
• Maintains the confidence of clients and colleagues, especially when handling sensitive information.

Quality Orientation

• Creates a sense of urgency to tackle problems and rewards responsiveness.
• Recognizes opportunity for improvement, creating and supporting processes and feedback to improve results.
• Holds others accountable for doing their best work.

Teamwork/Inclusion

• Promotes a culture of collaboration across roles and teams.
• Navigates difficult conversations with diplomacy and leverages cooperative efforts to resolve conflict.
• Confronts exclusionary behavior and participates productively in discussions of diverse, sensitive societal topics.

Continuous Learning

• Pursues challenging assignments and new knowledge.
• Encourages experimentation when faced with new challenges.
• Examines mistakes, clarifies lessons learned, and applies to future work.

Functional/Technical Expertise

• Leverages area of expertise to contribute to team and company goals.
• Promotes an environment where people openly share their expertise, experiences, opinions, ideas, and perspectives.
• Maintains knowledge, skills, and abilities relevant to success throughout job functions.

Leadership

INSPIRES THE ORGANIZATION

• Personifies the values of the organization and champions organizational culture and vision, earnestly supporting and mobilizing decisions made by organizational leadership.
• Navigates ambiguity and change in a positive way, proactively seeking support from leadership when needed.

FOCUSES ON CLIENT EXPERIENCE

• Fosters positive client relationships and coaches others to do the same, striving for best-in-class service and internal and external client satisfaction.
• Anticipates and responds proactively to changes in client needs, priorities, and/or expectations, ensuring quality results.

DEVELOPS THE STRENGTHS OF OTHERS

• Demonstrates empathy and builds strong relationships with colleagues.
• Seeks and shares productive feedback with candor to help others grow, celebrating the effort, progress, and everyday wins of colleagues.

DRIVES ACCOUNTABILITY, QUALITY, AND INNOVATION

• Expects and drives high-quality results and welcomes innovative strategies, especially in times of change.
• Models financially responsible behaviors and coaches others to be fiscally mindful as employee-owners.

Required Education, Experience, Licenses & Technical Competencies

• Bachelor’s degree in any engineering, construction management, science, technology, marketing, or business preferred. Years of relevant experience in leadership/management position will be considered in lieu of requisite education. 
• Eight (8) or greater years of relevant experience, with a minimum of two (2) years personnel or project management experience.
• Demonstrated success building and managing a sales pipeline, qualifying leads, and supporting pursuit strategies.
• Experience managing client engagements or projects from initiation through delivery.
• Background working in a consulting, professional services, or matrixed environment strongly preferred.
• Experience collaborating with cross‑functional teams to deliver client solutions and drive revenue growth.
• Demonstrates excellent motivation, team leading, and the ability to achieve goals and objectives.
• Broad proficiency of engineering design fundamentals and advanced knowledge of the A&E industry, codes, design guides, and standards. Knowledge may apply to a broad range of practice, project, or program types.
• Must demonstrate proficiency in all core competencies as described and characterized in this job description.

Physical & Other Requirements

• Prolonged periods of sitting or standing at a desk and working on a computer.
• Ability to read, write and communicate in English.