Job Specific Particulars
This role is hybrid / national role with travel across the UK as required.
Role Purpose
As a CBRE National Security and Resilience Lead, you will be responsible for shaping, leading and continuously improving CBRE’s resilience, preparedness and response capability across a broad spectrum of national security, civil contingency and operational disruption risks.
This is a leadership-level specialist role requiring an experienced professional able to manage preparedness against major disruption, reporting to the Head of Operations.
The National Security and Resilience Lead is accountable for ensuring clear ownership, capability development and performance across all resilience disciplines and sets the direction and outcomes for senior managers and team leads, rather than directly managing operational delivery.
It exists to ensure CBRE can anticipate, assess, prevent, mitigate, respond to, and recover from threats, including hostile activity, cyber incidents, infrastructure disruption, system failures, severe weather, public health events, and other major emergencies.
The National Security and Resilience Lead will also lead the development of resilience strategy, governance, planning, exercising and assurance, while ensuring alignment with relevant UK policy, government security requirements, national resilience standards and recognised frameworks such as ISO 22301 and ISO 22361 Crisis management and compliance with legislation such as the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act.
The role will report to the Head of Operations and serve as a senior adviser to leadership on national security and resilience risks, with a strong focus on critical services, cross-functional coordination, and executive decision support during incidents or periods of heightened threat.
Key Responsibilities
Lead the design, implementation and continuous improvement of CBRE’s resilience and preparedness framework, ensuring it is proportionate to the risk landscape and aligned to UK national resilience expectations. This includes resilience strategy, governance, operating model, escalation protocols, assurance mechanisms and improvement plans.
Define and continuously optimise the resilience and security operating model, including roles, responsibilities, escalation pathways, decision rights and integration with wider CBRE functions.
Provide strategic direction on how CBRE interprets national security and resilience threats in its own context, translating national guidance and emerging risks into practical action plans, investment priorities and leadership decisions.
Ensure resilience is embedded into planning, service delivery, transformation, supplier oversight and crisis leadership arrangements.
Establish and oversee a multi-layer assurance model covering operational delivery, control effectiveness, compliance and resilience outcomes, ensuring consistent standards across all teams and sites.
Hold functional leads accountable for delivery against agreed resilience, security and operational performance metrics.
Set enterprise-wide resilience priorities based on risk, criticality and CBRE’s objectives.
Ensure integration across physical security, cyber, operational resilience, business continuity and crisis management to avoid siloed capability and enable coordinated response to complex, multi-domain threats.
Lead CBRE’s resilience risk assessment approach, drawing on the National Security Risk Assessment and National Risk Register, alongside sector-specific intelligence, internal risk data and operational insight. Risk assessments will be dynamic, evidence-based and regularly refreshed to reflect changing threat conditions, interconnected risks and cascading impacts.
Act as the senior focal point for stakeholder engagement and resilience-related risk management, identifying vulnerabilities, single points of failure, interdependencies and areas where critical functions may fall outside agreed tolerances.
Advise executive leaders on risk appetite, resilience priorities and the controls needed to strengthen readiness and recovery capability.
Own CBRE’s major incident planning and crisis management capability, including policy, planning standards, scenario development, invocation thresholds, command structures, response playbooks and recovery arrangements.
Ensure critical services can continue or be restored quickly during disruption and that plans remain current, practical and tested.
Lead or coordinate CBRE’s response to serious incidents, working closely with executive leadership, operational teams and specialist functions such as cyber, facilities, communications, legal, HR and technology. This will include participation in strategic or tactical incident structures, situation reporting, lessons learned activity and post-incident remediation.
Work with our retained strategic security and Business Continuity consultants, to run a programme of exercising and testing covering business continuity, crisis management, operational resilience and multi-agency or cross-functional emergency scenarios.
Maintain formal assurance and reporting mechanisms to monitor resilience maturity, control effectiveness, action closure and CBRE’s preparedness. This should include periodic reporting to senior leadership, boards, committees or other governance forums, with clear articulation of current exposure, progress and residual risk.
Maintain and continuously review CBRE’s resilience-related policies, standards and procedures to ensure compliance with applicable legal, regulatory and policy expectations. This includes alignment to government security requirements, national resilience standards, sector regulation and internal control frameworks.
Monitor changes in legislation, national doctrine, policy and guidance relevant to civil contingencies, national security, local resilience, protective security and operational continuity, and translate these changes into practical internal updates.
Build and maintain strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders, including senior leaders, operational teams, government departments, regulators, emergency services, Local Resilience Forums, sector bodies, critical suppliers and infrastructure partners, where relevant.
Represent CBRE in resilience and security forums, provide briefings to senior officers and stakeholders, and contribute to partnership-based capability development where risks or incidents require cross-sector coordination.
Promote a culture in which resilience is understood as part of day-to-day leadership, operational planning and personal accountability.
Lead awareness, education and capability-building activity so that leaders, managers and teams understand their roles during disruption, are confident in escalation and response procedures, and are better able to contribute to prevention, preparedness and recovery.
Provide 24/7 security coverage support through occasional weekend on-call duties.
Execute ad hoc projects and initiatives based on evolving business needs and strategic priorities.
Person Specification/Requirements
Proven experience in a senior resilience, national security, crisis management, operational resilience, business continuity or civil contingencies role, ideally within complex multi-site organisations, government, critical national infrastructure, defence, regulated sectors or emergency services.
Strong track record of leading resilience frameworks, risk assessment processes, business continuity planning, exercising and incident response arrangements.
Experience of translating complex threat and risk information into clear recommendations for senior decision-makers is important, as is experience of influencing across multiple teams and governance levels.
Experience working with national, regional or sector resilience structures, or with complex stakeholder groups where roles and responsibilities must be coordinated across different organisations.
Experience in a national security, critical infrastructure or highly regulated environment.
Strong understanding of the UK resilience landscape, including the National Risk Register/NSRA context, cross-government resilience arrangements, business continuity, crisis management and the role of public-private coordination in major disruptions.
Working knowledge of recognised standards and frameworks relevant to the role, especially ISO 22301, operational resilience principles, risk management, protective security and incident management.
Understanding of how national security, cyber, physical, geopolitical, environmental and societal risks can interact and create system-wide effects.
Excellent strategic thinking, judgement and prioritisation, with the ability to operate calmly under pressure and make sound recommendations in ambiguous, time-critical situations.
Strong communication and briefing skills, including the ability to explain complex resilience risks to executives and boards in a concise and decision-oriented way.
Outstanding stakeholder management and influencing ability, with credibility across operational, technical and executive audiences.
Strong programme and project management capability, including the ability to drive action through governance, monitor delivery and ensure continual improvement.
Knowledge of local resilience standards, protective security frameworks and cross-government response arrangements would also be beneficial.
Understanding of health and safety, security operations and risk management
IOSH trained
Flexibility to travel nationally within the UK.
Desirable Specifications
Professional certification or training in business continuity, security risk management, crisis management or resilience is desirable. A degree or equivalent experience in security, risk, resilience, emergency planning, public policy, defence, business continuity or a related discipline is desirable.
Why CBRE
When you join CBRE, you become part of the global leader in commercial real estate services and investment that helps businesses and people thrive. We are dynamic problem solvers and forward-thinking professionals who create significant impact. Our collaborative culture is built on our shared values — respect, integrity, service and excellence — and we value the diverse perspectives, backgrounds and skillsets of our people. At CBRE, you have the opportunity to chart your own course and realize your potential. We welcome all applicants.
Applicant AI Use Disclosure
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