Senior / Principal Consultant – Transport Capital Projects (Programme Advisory)

We believe in the power of ingenuity to build a positive human future. As strategies, technologies, and innovation collide, we create opportunity from complexity. Our teams of interdisciplinary experts combine innovative thinking and breakthrough technologies to progress further, faster. Our clients adapt and transform, and together we achieve enduring results.

We are over 4,000 strategists, innovators, designers, consultants, digital experts, scientists, engineers, and technologists. And we have deep expertise in consumer and manufacturing, defence and security, energy and utilities, financial services, government and public services, health and life sciences, and transport. Our teams operate globally from offices across the UK, Ireland, US, Nordics, and Netherlands.

Hybrid working - our approach is to be in the office or on client site a minimum of 2 days per week. However, the actual time you spend and where you spend it will vary by role or assignment, including up to 5 days per week on a client site.

Join us in shaping the future of transport. Are you passionate about creating smarter, more sustainable transport systems? Do you enjoy solving complex challenges in a collaborative, supportive environment? If so, we’d love to hear from you.

At PA Consulting, we’re a global management consultancy that works with organisations across the transport sector—rail, roads, and aviation—to tackle their most critical challenges and unlock new opportunities. As we grow, we’re looking for talented individuals to join our team in the South-East of England. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and are especially keen to hear from women and under-represented groups in the transport and consultancy sectors.

On the back of continued success across our Transport practice, we are looking for talented people to join our growing Infrastructure & Capital Projects team. We work very closely with all our clients, build strong interpersonal relationships and pride ourselves on our ability to ‘walk the talk’. We provide strategic advice on all aspects of capital projects development and delivery, including business case development, commercial arrangements, financial structures, complex procurement advice and programme set-up.

We are particularly interested in those who have practical ‘hands-on’ experience with infrastructure and capital projects and an interest in:

• Design, set-up, governance, assurance and controls for major capital projects
• Delivery of major capital projects and change programmes
• Working across Road, Rail or Aviation

While successful candidates will have a good technical understanding of their field, deep specialism is not the only facet of PA consultants; we also want ingenious people who can turn highly technical detail into simple concepts and communicate this clearly to anyone from boardroom to factory floor. Our consultants should be able to adapt their style to work effectively with clients and inspire confidence. We’re looking for someone with these attributes:

• Self-motivation and ability to manage their own workload effectively
• Creative and open-minded, enjoying learning and trying new ways of doing things
• Strong communication, presentation creation, delivery and document writing skills
• A great team member in multi-discipline teams

Qualifications

What we’re looking for: We are looking for talented people with hands-on experience of the full project and programme lifecycle, with a blended commercial, procurement, engineering, delivery and supply chain acumen to help our road, rail & aviation clients solve some of their most challenging problems in the delivery of their major projects. If you can fulfil one or more of the following roles in our team, we would like to hear from you.

Technical skills

• Project Delivery (capital and operational work programmes) – in-depth knowledge and experience working on capital projects and a strong understanding of infrastructure delivery models, how they work in practice, and associated business operating model/change requirements.
• Delivery Models – a good understanding of collaborative delivery models to help drive value in capital-intensive projects, including alliancing, partnerships and other innovative delivery models and a good understanding of relevant industry-standard forms of contracts such as NEC.
• Governance – experience providing advice to public and private sector clients on the design and optimization of governance arrangements for major capital infrastructure programmes.
• Assurance – experience of designing and implementing assurance arrangements and/or delivering assurance reviews for major capital programmes.
• Project Controls – experience of designing, implementing and optimising project controls capabilities (people/process/tools) on major capital programmes.
• Business Change & Transformation – good understanding of change management techniques with experience of managing complex change and transformation projects/workstreams to enhance major capital infrastructure programmes.

Consulting Skills

• High-quality outputs – this means report-writing and presentation skills need to be strong (e.g., an ability to distil complex insights into easy-to-understand presentations and reports that could be understood across all levels of an organisation).
• Team management – able to lead small (2-5 people) teams deliver highly complex and strategically important assignments. This includes day-to-day activity management, project team wellbeing, and management of risks and issues on the assignment.
• Analytics – a strong, logical and problem-solving mindset. Good working knowledge of statistics and modelling with Excel or other tools. Strong writing and authorship skills.
• Future trends – an appreciation for new, and emerging sector capabilities and trends affecting the road/rail/aviation industries. Able to form views and discuss wider topics with our clients.

We know the skill-gap and ‘somewhat need to tick every box’ can get in the way of meeting brilliant candidates, so please don’t hesitate to apply – we’d love to hear from you.

Ready to make a difference? Apply now and help us shape the future of transport.

Additional information

Life At PA encompasses our peoples' experience at PA. It’s about how we enrich peoples’ working lives by giving them access to unique people and growth opportunities and purpose-led meaningful work. Our purpose guides how we work with our clients and our teams, and support our communities, to deliver insight and impact, solving the world’s most complex challenges. We’re focused on building a workplace that values human difference and diverse mindsets, and a culture of inclusion and equality that unlocks the potential in our people so everyone can be their best self.

We are dedicated to supporting the physical, emotional, social and financial well-being of our people. Check out some of our extensive benefits:

• Health and lifestyle perks accompanying private healthcare
• 25 days annual leave (plus a bonus half day on Christmas Eve) with the opportunity to buy 5 additional days
• Generous company pension scheme
• Opportunity to get involved with community and charity-based initiatives
• Annual performance-based bonus
• PA share ownership
• Tax efficient benefits (cycle to work, give as you earn)

We’re committed to advancing equality. We recruit, retain, reward and develop our people based solely on their abilities and contributions and without reference to their age, background, disability, genetic information, parental or family status, religion or belief, race, ethnicity, nationality, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity (or expression), political belief veteran status, or other by any other range of human difference brought about by identity and experience. We welcome applications from underrepresented groups.

Adjustments or accommodations - Should you need any adjustments or accommodations to the recruitment process, at either application or interview, please contact us on recruitmentenquiries@paconsulting.com.