Senior Cost Consultant

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 detail-oriented Senior Cost Consultant to support cost estimation, tender cost reconciliation, and construction cost control activities for large-scale data center and mission-critical projects in Dubai, UAE. This role requires strong cost management, commercial, analytical, and reporting skills, with the ability to support cost planning across design, tender, and construction phases.

The ideal candidate will have experience preparing design-stage cost estimates, supporting tender-stage cost reconciliation against bid prices, and managing construction-stage cost control activities for complex capital projects. The role requires the ability to work closely with project management, design, procurement, tendering, commercial, planning, and construction teams to ensure cost accuracy, budget alignment, and financial control throughout the project lifecycle.

You will play a key role in supporting the project's cost management framework across each project phase, following the RFP's literal per-phase structure, including design cost estimation, tender support cost reconciliation, and construction cost control.

Responsibilities

• Support cost management activities across the design, tender, and construction phases of large-scale data center and mission-critical projects.
• Prepare, review, and update cost estimates during design stages, ensuring alignment with project scope, design development, specifications, assumptions, and client requirements.
• Develop cost plans, estimate summaries, quantity take-offs, benchmarking inputs, cost breakdowns, and budget validation reports.
• Review design information, drawings, specifications, technical documents, scope narratives, and project assumptions to identify cost drivers, gaps, risks, and exclusions.
• Support tender-stage cost reconciliation by comparing internal cost estimates, bid prices, contractor submissions, commercial proposals, and pricing breakdowns.
• Identify variances between estimates and bid prices, including scope gaps, pricing discrepancies, quantity differences, exclusions, assumptions, escalation, contingency, allowances, and commercial risks.
• Prepare cost reconciliation reports, bid comparison summaries, tender cost analysis, and recommendation inputs for project leadership and client review.
• Coordinate with tendering, procurement, contracts, engineering, and commercial teams to support cost validation during the tender process.
• Support construction-phase cost control activities, including budget tracking, committed cost monitoring, forecast updates, cost reporting, and cost-to-complete analysis.
• Monitor actual and forecasted costs against approved budgets, identifying variances, trends, risks, and corrective actions.
• Support the review of payment applications, progress claims, variation requests, change orders, and cost impacts during construction.
• Maintain cost registers, budget logs, change logs, contingency trackers, cost reports, and supporting commercial documentation.
• Coordinate with project controls, planning, procurement, contracts, construction, and finance teams to ensure cost information is accurate, timely, and aligned across project reporting.
• Support estimate-at-completion updates, cash flow forecasting, contingency management, and cost risk assessments.
• Provide cost input into value engineering, scope optimization, procurement decisions, and commercial strategy.
• Ensure cost management activities follow the RFP's defined phase structure, with coverage based on design, tender support, and construction requirements rather than site-concurrency scaling.
• Prepare regular cost reports, dashboards, executive summaries, and cost analysis presentations for client and leadership review.
• Support closeout activities by validating final costs, variations, claims, cost records, and commercial documentation.
• Perform other related duties as required and assigned.
  
  

Qualifications

Required qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in cost consulting, cost estimation, cost control, quantity surveying, commercial management, or project controls within large-scale construction, infrastructure, industrial, or mission-critical projects.
• Bachelor's degree in Quantity Surveying, Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Construction Management, Cost Management, or a related field.
• Strong experience preparing cost estimates during design stages for complex building, infrastructure, industrial, or mission-critical projects.
• Experience supporting tender-stage cost reconciliation against contractor bid prices, commercial proposals, and pricing breakdowns.
• Experience supporting construction-stage cost control, including budget tracking, forecasting, cost reporting, payment review, change management, and cost-to-complete analysis.
• Strong ability to review drawings, specifications, BOQs, scope documents, tender documents, bid submissions, and commercial proposals.
• Strong knowledge of quantity take-offs, cost planning, benchmarking, cost breakdown structures, budget validation, and commercial reporting.
• Ability to identify cost variances, pricing gaps, scope omissions, exclusions, assumptions, escalation impacts, contingency requirements, and commercial risks.
• Experience coordinating with project management, engineering, procurement, tendering, contracts, planning, construction, and client teams.
• Strong analytical skills with excellent attention to detail and accuracy.
• Strong communication and reporting skills with the ability to present cost information clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong organizational skills with the ability to manage multiple cost deliverables, deadlines, and stakeholder inputs.
• 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, cost consultancy, developer, or client-side project controls environment.
• Previous experience working in Dubai, the UAE, or the wider GCC region.
• Professional membership or certification, such as MRICS, RICS, AIQS, AACE, CCP, or equivalent cost management credential.
• Experience with FIDIC-based contracts, EPC procurement, tender evaluation, cost reconciliation, and commercial risk assessment.
• Experience supporting value engineering, estimate-at-completion reporting, cash flow forecasting, contingency tracking, and change order evaluation.
• Familiarity with cost management, project controls, procurement, or document control platforms such as CostX, Candy, SAP, Oracle Primavera Cloud, Procore, Aconex, or similar systems.
• Familiarity with Primavera P6 or Microsoft Project for schedule-cost interface review.
• Knowledge of MEP, CSA, ICT, and infrastructure cost elements within complex data center or mission-critical projects.
  
  

POSITION DETAILS

• Location (On-site): Dubai, United Arab Emirates
• Position: Senior Cost Consultant
• 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.

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