FIFA Design Compliance Expert

About Mace Group

Mace Group combines construction expertise with consultancy services, aiming to enhance project potential and redefine ambition. The company is currently providing strategic project management consultancy for significant new stadium builds, multiple stadium redevelopments, and wider precinct transformations in Riyadh. This scope includes delivering new stadiums, increasing existing stadium capacities, developing major mixed-use amenities, and implementing robust knowledge-transfer programs to ensure operational excellence and long-term sustainability beyond construction.

The Role: FIFA Design Compliance Expert

The FIFA Design Compliance Expert will join a dedicated team responsible for managing all FIFA and World Cup requirements throughout the design process for Stadium and Training site Programmes in Riyadh. This part-time role involves providing authoritative interpretation, design assurance, and strategic guidance from concept design through detailed design, technical approvals, and design freeze. The expert will collaborate closely with the client, World Cup Authority, FIFA, Lead Designers, specialist consultants, and programme teams to ensure that permanent works and planned overlay are coordinated, compliant, buildable, and aligned with operational, legacy, cost, and programmed objectives.

Key Responsibilities

• Interface with FIFA, the World Cup Authority, and the client, contributing to design reviews, technical workshops, submissions, and approval meetings, and providing clear positions on compliance, design acceptability, derogations, and risks.
• Manage and maintain FIFA design requirements, compliance matrices, and design assurance plans, translating FIFA stadium standards and host requirements into clear briefs, criteria, and actions for all design disciplines.
• Review and challenge stadium designs from concept through detailed design to confirm compliance across various areas including field of play, seating bowl and sightlines, spectator circulation, accessibility, safety and security, broadcast, media, hospitality, team and official facilities, back-of-house areas, masterplan tournament mode design, logistics, transport interfaces, and fan experience.
• Establish design-stage compliance gateways and coordinate the preparation, quality assurance, and submission of design reports, drawings, schedules, dashboards, and evidence packs required for FIFA and authority reviews.
• Coordinate multidisciplinary design integration across architecture, structural engineering, MEP, ICT, security, fire and life safety, vertical transportation, landscape, wayfinding, acoustics, lighting, broadcast, and specialist venue systems, ensuring interfaces and spatial requirements are resolved before design freeze from a FIFA perspective.
• Coordinate permanent works with temporary and overlay requirements, identifying where provisions, capacities, routes, loadings, spaces, and connection points must be embedded in the base design to avoid late redesign or unnecessary long-term cost.
• Provide programme-wide design assurance across multiple stadiums and training facilities, reporting compliance status, design risks, departures, decisions, and mitigation actions, while promoting consistency and lessons learned across the venue portfolio.
• Advise client leadership and design teams on FIFA strategy, value engineering, design changes, approvals, and legacy outcomes, ensuring cost or programme decisions do not compromise mandatory compliance or venue functionality.

Qualifications and Experience

• A degree in architecture, engineering, sports venue design, or a related discipline. Professional accreditation and FIFA-related credentials are desirable.
• Extensive design-stage experience on FIFA World Cup stadiums and training facilities, major football venues, or comparable international event venues, with involvement from concept design through detailed design and approvals.
• Proven experience interpreting FIFA stadium requirements and converting them into design briefs, compliance matrices, review comments, technical submissions, and coordinated design solutions.
• Strong technical understanding of stadium planning and design, including seating bowl geometry and sightlines, crowd movement, accessibility, safety and security, fire and life safety, broadcast and media, hospitality, player and official facilities, back-of-house operations, and overlay interfaces.
• Experience leading multidisciplinary design reviews and resolving interfaces between architecture, engineering, specialist venue systems, operational requirements, BIM coordination, and temporary event infrastructure.
• Programme-level experience providing design assurance across multiple stadiums, training sites, or sport venues, with the ability to manage compliance, risk, cost, programme, approvals, and legacy considerations.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, with the credibility to lead technical discussions, provide clear design direction, and constructively challenge consultants and senior stakeholders.