Large Water & Waste Infrastructure Oversight Lead

Join Ofwat’s Water Supply Team as a Principal Large Water & Waste Infrastructure Oversight Lead

* Office Location: Birmingham (B5 4UA) or London (E14 4HD) with hybrid working*

About Us

We are Ofwat, the Water Services Regulation Authority, a non-ministerial government department responsible for regulating the water sector in England and Wales.

The water sector is entering a new chapter. The government has set out a bold new direction, bringing together expertise from across the sector to deliver better outcomes for customers and the environment. We are collaborating with fellow regulators to respond to recommendations in The Independent Water Commission Report, the Welsh Government’s response to the Green Paper, Shaping the Future of Water Governance in Wales, and the Government’s White Paper, A new vision for water.

Ofwat is working with the government and other regulators to help create a new body for England, bringing together our strengths with those of the Drinking Water Inspectorate, the Environment Agency and Natural England. We are also continuing to work with the Welsh Government to support decisions on the future arrangements for Wales.

While these changes take shape, our mission remains the same: to hold water companies to account, drive performance, and ensure the sector delivers real value for customers, communities, and the environment. If you’re passionate about making a difference, this is a unique moment to join us and help shape the future of water, and together we can continue to make a positive impact.

The Role

We're looking for a Large Water & Waste Infrastructure Oversight Lead to join our Water Supply team within the RAPID and Environmental Planning directorate at Principal level. The sector is facing unprecedented challenges, and we want someone who relishes the opportunity to apply their skills and experience to improve our water environment. Whilst there are specific policy areas you will lead on, you will also play an important role in driving the collaborative work programme across Governments and with other regulators to improve future water resources management.

The Large Water & Waste Infrastructure Oversight Lead role has an important and valuable contribution to enable us to deliver on our goals and regulatory commitments. Primarily, you will lead the large scheme gated process and our oversight of development of large water and wastewater schemes within it. These complex schemes received funding at the 2024 price review and are required to address the growing challenges the industry faces.

The gated process you will lead ensures their timely development continues to demonstrate technical feasibility and cost efficiency for customers and the environment. To achieve this, you will lead our strategy for engaging and building relationships with water companies and their programme delivery and technical teams, wider governments, regulators and a varied range of stakeholders. You will also lead on policy decisions within the process and develop policy to shape its ongoing evolution.

Your role may also cover areas such as the Asset Improvement Process – coordinating the process and bringing together engineering, asset management, economics, assurance and regulatory stakeholders to identify, develop and justify investment programmes for Ofwat funding. You will also work to align technical and programme insights across dependant regulatory processes and teams. This includes technical planning processes, such as water resources management plans (WRMPs) and drainage and wastewater management plans (DWMPs), as well as economic and delivery processes, including future price reviews, cost change processes, delivery plans and price control deliverables (PCDs).

About You

Below are some of the key essential experience, skills & knowledge required for this post:

• Relevant technical experience within engineering, science, capital programmes, asset management and/or business planning, working at a senior level, ideally within the water industry.
• Academic or professional experience of wider environmental issues and good knowledge/understanding of those related to the water industry.
• Experience of policy development and implementation, and/or designing and delivering programmes of work or processes within a relevant field.
• Significant experience of building and maintaining constructive working relationships with internal and external stakeholders, influencing decisions and delivering outcomes across organisational boundaries.
• Highly numerate with significant experience of leading and completing complex technical analysis, critically evaluating the work of others and providing evidence-based recommendations.
• Excellent communication (oral and written) skills, including the ability to communicate complex concepts to technical and non-technical audiences in order to inform policy making, decision making or recommendations.

Why You Should Join Us

• People Centric: Our people are at the heart of Ofwat and everything we do - we ensure all voices are heard and treat each other with respect; you'll be given the autonomy and the support to do your role in the best way.
• Innovative Work Environment: We embrace agile and new ways of working and have a culture build on trust, flexibility, and collaboration.
• Development Opportunities: Gain valuable experience and develop your skills in a supportive and dynamic setting.
• Work-Life Balance: Enjoy the flexibility of working from home combined with the benefits of in person collaboration in our Birmingham and London offices.
• Excellent employer pension contributions.
• 25 days’ annual leave, increasing to 30 with each year of service, plus bank holidays and an extra 2.5 days of privilege leave.
• Access to exclusive discounts on a variety of goods and services, including retail outlets, theatre tickets, holidays, insurance, and a gym membership.
• Fees paid for membership of relevant professional bodies.
• Up to 3 volunteering days per year.
• Generous shared parental leave and pay supporting your family life.

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