Capex Finance

Role Overview:

The Sr.Lead CAPEX Finance is a technical and finance specialist responsible for validating the capital efficiency and financial control of large-scale projects. This role goes beyond traditional finance—requiring a deep understanding of the technical, construction, and executional complexities involved in delivering and maintaining integrated steelmaking facilities

The successful individual will work hand-in-hand with engineering, construction, and executive teams to achieve the project timelines, independently challenge project assumptions, undertake benchmarking, validate technical inputs, develop commercial strategy and ensure capital is allocated to deliver sustainable long-term value.

Key Responsibilities:

Project execution, Commercial strategy & Benchmarking:

• Active participating in project planning, execution, developing commercial & benchmarking strategy & optimising the capex.
• Critically challenge scope, design assumptions, and constructability strategies—especially across civil works, foundations, structural steel, utilities, and access infrastructure
• Analyze labour strategies (e.g., local vs. rotational workforce, stay amenities) and their impact on productivity and cost
• Validate configuration and deployment of major and minor steelmaking equipment including blast furnaces, EAFs, basic oxygen furnaces, ladle metallurgy, casters, reheat furnaces, and rolling mills, minor spares, cables, and ancillaries

Capital Governance & Investment calculation:

• Compute and ensure capital governance processes for all types of minor and major projects, ensuring discipline around cost benchmarking, risk identification, and investment return metrics (NPV, IRR)
• Follow through adherence to internal investment hurdle-rates and ensure the quality and objectivity of financial input during decision-making
• Prepare and present for approvals related to periodic maintenance of the delivered projects, from cost evaluation to execution
• Provide asset assurance committee and board-level support to the Head of Capex investments Vizag with well-documented financial justifications and risk-adjusted capital scenarios

Budgeting, Forecasting & Cost Control:

• Prepare strategic long term and annual business plans for Capex investments
• Conduct industry benchmarking study for new proposals from projects, including those implemented in China, Brazil, Mexico others
• Develop project-level and consolidated CAPEX budgets, forecasts, and cash flow models for multi-phase steel plant builds and operational capex
• Monitor actuals vs. budget and challenge cost variances and schedule slippages, particularly across critical path activities and long-lead items
• Ensure that project controls, item-level approval and reporting systems are in place to support transparent decision-making and accountability
• Conduct follow up meetings with project stakeholders to ensure that the project IRR is realized. Do a post project IRR outcome analysis
• Manages and controls project budgets within the SAP system and reports Via Excel, Dashboard - Tableau / BI
• Monitors key capex KPIs by analyzing deviations against budget and business plans – Variance Analysis
• Controls Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) and ensures timely project capitalization – built in the system to have the budget, payment and capitalization align

Stakeholder Partnership & Reporting:

• Support Treasury to raise Project and Corporate Term Loans in time, towards achieving Financial Closure, and submission of Lender MIS reporting associated with Capex Projects
• Collaborate closely with project engineering leads, procurement teams etc to ensure a unified view of project cost, scope, and risk
• Prepare accurate and timely reporting to Management Committee and boards, translating complex technical and construction progress into actionable financial narratives
• Support project risk reviews, Lenders Independent Evaluation, Lead Independent Engineer studies and audits

Risk Management & Best Practices:

• Identify financial risks associated with construction strategy, supporting utilities readiness, land development, contractor capacity, and supply chain volatility
• Participate in continuous improvement initiatives focused on capital cost accuracy, project readiness, and post-project reviews
• Contribute to the development of in-house standards for cost estimation, contingency setting, and benchmarking of steel plant builds
• undertakes automation of processes, manuals and reporting systems

Key Requirements:

Education & Training:

• CA/ CMA/ MBA finance

Experience:

• >10 years of experience in capital project evaluation, project controls, or investment evaluation within large-scale industrial, or steel sector projects
• Hands-on exposure to feasibility studies, SAP systems for WBS workflow, budget inputting, tracking and monitoring spends, capitalisation rules,

Technical & Financial Skills:

• Good understanding of steel plant process flows and the capital implications of heavy mechanical installations, raw material handling systems, and supporting utilities
• Financial modeling capability with focus on project return metrics (NPV, IRR, payback, sensitivity analysis)
• Knowledge in SAP, preferably S4 HANA or similar
• Familiarity with capital estimate classification systems (e.g., AACE Class 5 to Class 1) or similar

Soft Skills:

• Strong analytical mindset with the ability to constructively challenge project teams and influence leadership
• Highly collaborative, able to interface across technical and non-technical functions
• Excellent communication and presentation skills, including board-level reporting
• Ability to execute the strategy independently in a new location, on a greenfield project