Design Manager - Architectural & Facades - Prisons

Shape the Future of Critical Infrastructure

We're looking for an experienced Design Manager to lead the architectural and façade design packages across two major justice sector schemes
- HMP Grendon and HMP Garth & Wymott
. This is a fantastic opportunity to influence technically complex, socially vital projects while working within a collaborative, expert design community.

Based in our Sale office, with regular site visits to Bicester and Preston
, you'll play a pivotal role in ensuring design excellence, compliance and quality from concept through to handover

In this role, you will be the driving force behind design assurance and compliance, with a strong focus on:

• Managing statutory and technical compliance
  , ensuring all architectural and façade solutions meet required standards and project obligations.
• Leading the derogations process
  , coordinating and tracking deviations, ensuring clarity, justification and client engagement.
• Coordinating the flow of design information
  , ensuring timely production, review and distribution using our established design management procedures.
• Supporting project delivery teams
  , resolving technical queries, maintaining buildability considerations and facilitating collaborative design reviews.
• Engaging with designers
  , preparing scopes, reviewing appointments, and ensuring design partners meet capability and capacity requirements.
• Driving design optimisation
  , identifying opportunities to improve performance, cost, sustainability, and long-term maintainability.
• Championing governance
  , maintaining clear evidence of compliance with processes, risk management and change control.

You’ll join a highly capable team of design professionals who are committed to delivering safe, efficient, technically assured solutions across all stages of project delivery

We're looking for someone who has:

• A degree in Architecture or Engineering (or a relevant construction-related discipline).
• 5+ years' experience managing design packages, ideally from concept through to completion.
• Strong understanding of building envelopes, façade systems, and architectural coordination
  .
• Ability to manage complex compliance requirements
  , technical assurance, and stakeholder expectations.
• Experience across varied procurement routes and multidisciplinary environments.
• Confidence to lead design reviews, manage risk, and challenge assumptions constructively.
• An agile, proactive approach with strong problem-solving and communication skills.

Chartered status (or working towards it) is advantageous.

You'll be part of a project team that values:

• Technical excellence
• Collaboration and knowledge‑sharing
• Innovation and digital adoption
• Continuous improvement

This is a chance to work on nationally significant projects with real social purpose — contributing to safer, more efficient, and future‑ready custodial environments.

Laing O'Rourke are an international engineering and construction company delivering state‑of‑the‑art infrastructure and buildings projects for clients in the UK, Middle East and Australia.

Certainty, reliability, quality – this is what our clients want. And at Laing O'Rourke, we have more than 150 years of experience delivering it. Laing O'Rourke's story is one of energy, passion, ambition, people and teamwork. We harness the power of our experience, stretching back over a century and a half to deliver certainty for our clients.

As part of the Disability Confident scheme, we would like to enable access to candidates with long term conditions and disabilities through the ‘Offer an interview scheme'. This supports applicants that meet the essential criteria by offering an interview for the advertised position. Please let us know if you would like to opt in to this scheme and let us know if you require any adjustments for the interview process.

We want to ensure our recruitment process is accessible to all. If you need the application form in an alternative format or you would like to know more about our recruitment process, please email re

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