Graduate Planner 2027 - SPA in Peterborough

We are looking for candidates who are willing to locate to a variety of locations based in Peterborough and surrounding area, where they can develop and extend their skills and capabilities in this exciting discipline. This would be for September 2027 intake.

The Anglian Water Strategic Pipeline Alliance (SPA) project currently involves the planning, design and construction of circa 320km of new strategic, large diameter, clean water interconnector pipelines and associated infrastructure across Anglian Water’s region. The SPA Alliance is also taking on responsibility for the future interconnector pipelines, a further 260km of strategic interconnector pipelines and associated infrastructure.

At Costain, we help to improve people’s lives by creating connected, sustainable infrastructure that enables people and the planet to thrive. We work together to shape, create, and deliver pioneering solutions that transform the performance of the UK’s infrastructure ecosystem across energy, water, transportation and defence markets. Through our collaboration with customers, partners, communities, and wider industry we will deliver an infrastructure fit for a better future.

Full UK Driving Licence is essential.

Please note that some roles may be within the Nuclear & Defence sector and candidates will need to obtain Security Clearance and have been resident in the UK for the last 5 years.

Costain's Graduate Development Programme

The programme will focus on helping you to grow your personal and leadership skills, alongside business and technical skills you will learn day-to-day on the job. The programme will provide you with specific technical training for your specialised discipline. The programme is delivered in a variety of formats throughout the 2 years and will allow you to establish a network of contacts that will help and support you through your first 2 years and beyond. We expect some of our graduates to rotate after a period of 8-12 months, to another project/sector of the business to fully understand the depth and breadth of the services offered by the company. Our line managers are fully supportive of the Graduate Development Programme and will be involved in helping you along the way. In addition to the programme, we offer mentoring and support in every area of work, as well as a structured training programme to enable graduates to work towards achieving Chartership. Graduates may have the opportunity to work on a number of exciting and progressive projects around the UK during the 2-year period, in sectors including nuclear, highways, rail, water, airports and tunnels.

Responsibilities

• Assist with collaboratively developing and maintaining robust detailed project plans for the Delivery Team in accordance with SPA and AW requirements.
• Liaise with Delivery Teams to ensure consistency of key assumptions on methodology and outputs.
• Learn what constitutes a robust plan that withstands detailed scrutiny.
• Assist with ensuring project plans capture the full project scope.
• Assist with ensuring the plan clearly identifies any delay to support claims for additional cost or time.
• Assist with ensuring plans are resource loaded and the resource plan is maintained.
• Assist with pro-actively ensuring project plans are up to date.
• Assist with pro-actively identifying opportunities and risks in the plan and monitor the critical path and key milestones, advising the delivery team on any potential changes.
• Assist with collaboratively exploring mitigation and what if scenarios to pro-actively improve project delivery.
• Assist with developing 4D animations of the project plan to aid digital rehearsal of the project construction.
• Gather and collate progress information and reasons for any deviations.
• Learn to communicate the effects of progress on key dates and challenge team to deliver on time.
• Attend site regularly to gather programme update information.
• Learn to communicate the critical path and key activities in team meetings.

Knowledge, Skills, and Experience

• Site based engineering background.
• Experience in one or more of civils, water, wastewater or M&E.
• Knowledge of current HSE requirements.
• Computer literate.
• Ability to use planning software.
• Ability to interrogate / take information from drawings.
• Good communicator able to communicate detailed data to a non-data literate audience.
• Ability to work to tight deadlines.
• Ability to manage/prioritise workloads.
• Ability to adapt and challenge.

Qualifications

• Essential: Educated to degree level in a related subject such as Civils, Construction, Quantity Surveying, Programme Controls, or Project Management.
• Minimum GCSEs (or equivalent) in Maths.
• Full, clean UK driving licence.

• Desirable: APM Project Fundamentals.

Please note that if you are invited to interview, we will require you to produce your passport and/or right to work documentation. As some of our project sites are based in remote locations, it is worth noting that you will be required to have the ability to travel to site.