6‑Month Assignment | Construction Group | Transaction prep
Location: Bedfordshire
A market‑leading engineering and construction group is seeking an experienced Interim Finance Consultant to support a critical programme of work focused on strengthening project accounting, enhancing financial controls, and improving group reporting across multiple international sites. This is a confidential appointment to support the MD and senior leadership team in preparation for a transaction.
The Opportunity
This role sits at the heart of a complex, multinational organisation delivering long‑term engineered projects across the UK, Europe, Asia and North America. The operations span manufacturing, specialist engineering, and contract delivery — with revenue recognised over multi‑year builds and critical infrastructure programmes.
We are looking for a seasoned finance professional who can get into the detail, quickly understand how project performance flows through the accounts, and bring clarity, structure, and consistency across multiple business units.
You will be reviewing site‑level financials, interrogating contract performance, strengthening reporting frameworks, and providing senior stakeholders with practical recommendations to improve accuracy, forecasting and controls.
Key Responsibilities
- Support senior management on transaction-related work, including analysis, documentation and preparatory reviews.
- Review end‑to‑end project accounting, including percentage‑of‑completion (POC), cost‑to‑complete, WIP and long‑term contract revenue.
- Analyse full sets of accounts across multiple manufacturing and project delivery sites.
- Assess project margins, operational performance, and contract profitability.
- Review and challenge consolidated financial reporting, ensuring accuracy and alignment across regions.
- Map financial processes and identify gaps, inefficiencies or control weaknesses.
- Work closely with operational, commercial and site leadership to validate numbers and improve financial insight.
- Provide pragmatic recommendations to improve reporting cadence, forecasting, and MI quality.
Experience
- A strong background in construction, engineering, industrial manufacturing, or other project-driven environments.
- Demonstrable experience with POC accounting, long‑term contracts, and complex revenue recognition.
- Deep understanding of statutory accounts, group financials and consolidated reporting.
- Ability to operate with limited direction — comfortable rolling up sleeves and diving into granular detail.
- Experience reviewing multi‑site organisations, ideally across international locations.
- Strong commercial judgement, able to translate financial issues into operational insights.
- The confidence and communication skills to challenge senior stakeholders constructively.
- A consulting mindset with the discipline to deliver quickly in a fast-paced environment.
