Built Environment Legal Specialist X2
DBSA
Job Description
The Built Environment Legal Specialist is responsible for ensuring legal compliance and providing legal advice and guidance on infrastructure delivery transactions. This role focuses on regulatory adherence and the development/review of contractual agreements to mitigate legal risks and safeguard DBSA's infrastructure portfolio.
Key Responsibilities
KEY PERFORMANCE AREAS:
1. Strategic Initiatives and Planning- Monitor and ensure compliance with all relevant construction, infrastructure and procurement legislation by the Infrastructure Delivery Division (IDD) of the DBSA.
- Maintain general regulatory compliance and uphold corporate governance.
- Consult with DBSA Group Legal for support in specialised areas of law.
- Lead risk management and governance policies and processes and develop plans to mitigate and resolve identified challenges.
- Develop a system for the preparation of contractual documents, ensuring identification of standard and critical legal clauses to protect the interest of the DBSA, and maintain templates as required.
- Provide advice on draft tender documentation and motivation to sourcing documentation to support the Bid Specification Committee in selecting a commercially sound contracting strategy and applicable standard form contract.
- Provide legal advice and quality control in the drafting of project specific construction contracts and agreements between the Infrastructure Delivery Division and individuals, third parties, professional service providers; suppliers and contractors.
- Advise and provide legal input on contractual matters to management and the project team.
- Communicate with service providers, clients and internal business units on contractual matters including claims for delays, extension of time, additional payments and variations.
- Provide advice to the Bid Evaluation Committee through the review and verification of appointment or acceptance letters, performance guarantees and all contract documents.
- Coordinate the negotiation of construction contracts and agreements with clients.
- Oversee compliance to contract award requirements ensuring all conditions are satisfied including performance guarantees, insurance and other relevant documentation.
- Provide guidance and assist in mediating contractual disputes, including attending special meetings with contractors as requested by the Construction Project Manager.
- Provide legal input in commenting on contractor claims with regard to construction or professional services contracts.
- Prepare IDD contractual claims including extensions, prolongation of cost, acceleration cost and others.
- Lead litigation, adjudication, and arbitration matters, manage external counsel and attorneys, provide input into selecting counsel and attorneys for each matter, and manage external legal costs.
- Ensure that all legal documentation, including guarantees, is securely filed and archived.
Key Measurements of Outputs:
1. Time taken to prepare contracts, agreements and legal opinions.
2. Quality and accuracy of contracts, agreements, opinions and solutions provided.
3. Quality of legal due diligence on contracts and agreements negotiated.
4. Effective management of legal claims and litigation risks.
5. Management of total case/agreement / opinion / other legal costs.
6. No litigation due to contractual errors and or omissions.
7. Effective monitoring of the contracts and agreements.
8. Clean audit.
KEY INTERNAL LIAISON RELATIONSHIPS:
1.Group Executive: IDD
2.Group General Counsel
3.Head: Legal and Contracting
4.All IDD Business Units
5.All DBSA Divisions
6.Overall DBSA management
KEY EXTERNAL LIAISON RELATIONSHIPS:
1.External Service Providers and Contractors
2.External stakeholders
3.External Client(s)
4.External attorneys and experts
Expertise & Technical Competencies
QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE:
Minimum Requirements
1.Bachelor of Laws (LLB)and an Admitted Attorney of the High Court of South Africa.
2.Admitted Attorney/Advocate of the High Court of South Africa.
3.A minimum of 7 years’ experience in the provision of legal advice and contract management for construction projects in the built environment.
4.Extensive experience in Construction Law, Procurement Law and the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA).
5.Sound knowledge of the Joint Building Contracts Committee JBCC), New Engineering Contracts (NEC), Government Certificate of Competency (GCC), Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) and FIDIC contracts.
6.In-depth understanding of complex legal concepts in business terms.
7.Ability to scrutinise vast amounts of information and identify key points promptly and accurately.
8.Knowledge of relevant legislation and regulations regarding infrastructure development, as well as mediation, adjudication and arbitration of dispute processes.
9.Understanding of infrastructure markets, government priorities, systems and processes at the national and provincial levels.
Desirable Requirements
1.A postgraduate degree/diploma in law or construction management.
TECHNICAL COMPETENCIES:
a. Written Communication- Understands that different writing styles are required for different documents or audiences.
- Write effective correspondence, prepares questions and reports, statements of circumstance and briefing.
- Reviews others’ documents for clarity and impact.
- Has a solid mastery of writing principles such as grammar, sentence construction etc.
b. Presentation Skills
- Knows how to deliver arguments persuasively by employing a range of advanced presentation techniques (e.g., the appropriate use of body language, how to close a presentation so that the audience continues to think about the subject matter etc.).
- Can reinforce key presentation points with examples.
- Is able to translate technical terminology into language understandable to the audience.
- Has insight into the audience’s behavior and motivation and responds appropriately and professionally,
- Has knowledge of various feedback mechanisms to check levels of audience understanding.
- Designs / customizes reports to meet user needs.
- Prepares complex or tailored reports, gathers information from a variety of sources, analyses and included in a report.
- Keeps standard reports under review and proposes improvements to meet user needs.
- Extensive knowledge and understanding of the principles of DBSA.
- Wide-ranging knowledge of industry best practice, and keeps abreast of, interprets and informs on developments in the area of new laws and regulations relevant to DBSA.
- Ability to represent DBSA in the court of law when required.
- Ability to draft non-standard legal documents per procedures.
- Ability to draft more sensitive policy and legal procedures to be followed by stakeholders of DBSA, and review and refine in response to inputs from relevant stakeholders, for approval.
- Ability to understand legal rights and responsibilities and the possession of authority to make legal decisions.
- Protects the organisation’s legal rights, utilizing a broad knowledge base of all major legal disciplines.
- Takes actions to fit business strategy.
- Assesses and links short-term tasks in the context of long-term business strategies or perspectives.
- Reviews own actions against the organisation's strategic plan; includes the big picture when considering possible opportunities or projects or thinks about long-term applications of current activities.
- Anticipates possible responses to different initiatives.
- Understands the projected direction of the industry and how changes might impact the organisation.
- Has an appreciation of cultural sensitivities and differences.
- Effectively employs a variety of advanced behavioural/interpersonal competencies to control the negotiation situation.
- Is able to take the lead in a variety of sensitive negotiation situations requiring high levels of tact and diplomacy.
- Is able to place a discrete negotiation situation within the context of a broader long-term relationship and is not threatened by conceding ground to protect the longer-term interests of DBSA.
Required Personal Attributes
BEHAVIOURAL COMPETENCIES
a. Customer Orientation- Tries to understand the underlying needs of customers and match these needs to available or customized products and services.
- Adapts processes and procedures to meet on-going customer needs.
- Utilises the feedback received from customers, in order to develop new and / or improving existing services / products that relates to their on-going needs.
- Thinks of new ways to align DBSA’s offering with future customer needs.
- Is willing to end a business relationship because it was associated with unethical business practice.
- Is capable of challenging senior management (in an appropriate and respectable manner) in order to act on espoused values.
- Creates the conditions that enables the team to perform at its best (e.g., setting clear directions, providing appropriate structure, getting the right people, obtain needed resources).
- Monitors performance against clear standards, and addresses performance issues promptly and takes action to get performance back to desired levels.
- Proactively asks for feedback on own performance from team members, aiming to become more effective.
- Acts to promote a friendly climate and good morale and resolves conflicts.
- Creates opportunities for cross-functional work.
- Encourages others to network outside of their own team / department and learn from their experience.
- Includes careful preparation of data for presentation.
- Makes two or more different arguments or points in a presentation or a discussion...
- Recognises opportunities or potential problems, before they become obvious, by seeing the connections in a range of sources of information, including insights from outside DBSA.
- Restates complex knowledge in a way that makes it easier for others to understand.
- Experiments with new approaches, tests scenarios, questions assumptions and challenges conventional thinking.
- Creates new concepts that are not obvious to others, leveraging internal and external sources of information, to build incremental revenue and growth opportunities.
- Acts to promote a friendly climate and good morale and resolve conflicts.
- Creates opportunities for cross-functional work.
- Encourages others to network outside of their own team / department and learn from their experience.
- Undertakes challenging assignment and strives to complete them.
- Sets priorities and chooses goals on the basis of calculated costs, anticipated benefits and improvement of performance.
- Aims at exceptional performance, setting out to achieve a unique standard.
- Constantly analysis outcomes to ensure the achievements of business goal.
- Identifies short-term opportunity or potential problems aiming to achieve better outcomes.
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