Dawn Wharton

Head of Commercial Governance, Major infrastructure Projects

Babcock International

United Kingdom

Dawn has worked in the defence industry for Babcock at Devonport Royal Dockyard for thirty years. Starting her career in HR providing employee relations and welfare support, she saw an opportunity to change careers from HR to commercial when the dockyard won a major multi-million-pound construction contract from the Ministry of Defence. Realising she had found her niche in the commercial world she has progressed her career and continued to work on major construction projects across the dockyard being an integral part of the negotiation and contract management team on a number of complex contracts with the MoD ranging from standard terms, partnering agreements and NEC4 framework contracts. Currently Head of Commercial Governance for Major Infrastructure Projects, Dawn is part of a large team delivering circa £2Bn of complex civil construction contracts within a nuclear licenced site responsible for cost control, effective risk management, scope change, resolution of claims, subcontractor engagement and collaboration with multiple stakeholders. Dawn is a passionate advocate in promoting women into construction and engineering and recently undertook the role of mentor as part of the Women in Defence mentoring programme. She has successfully developed training and peer support programmes at grass roots level to train and develop the next generation of commercial professionals with cohorts moving through the WCC programme as part of their learning portfolio.

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