Role description
The Arcadis Resilience Programme Management & Commercial Management unit is seeking an experienced Planning Manager to develop and implement new planning processes and systems, and to oversee all planning activities across tender, project, and portfolio levels for our key contractor accounts within the water across England and Wales. This strategic role will establish robust planning governance, integrate programme schedules, and drive continuous improvement in project delivery within the water and wastewater sector. A core responsibility will be building and leading a new planning team dedicated to supporting design‑and‑build projects with key contractor clients, ensuring consistent methodologies, tooling, and best practice are embedded across programmes. In this role, you will provide expert advice to project teams and senior leadership on earned value management, resource requirements, programme risks, performance reporting, and outturn cost forecasting. You will collaborate closely with portfolio leads, discipline leads, and business stakeholders to optimise resource forecasting, align plans with delivery capabilities, and strengthen financial and schedule control. Additionally, you will support tendering activities by delivering comprehensive programme inputs, resourcing strategies, and cost forecast data that improve bid accuracy and deliverability. Your leadership will be critical in maturing planning capability, enhancing predictability, and enabling the successful delivery of complex resilience infrastructure programmes.
Role accountabilities
* Lead, recruit and develop a specialist planning team for water/wastewater design‑and‑build programmes, defining roles, standards and capability uplift.
* Design, implement and embed new planning processes, procedures and tools to standardise delivery across tender, project and portfolio levels.
* Own integrated baseline programmes, WBS and schedule hierarchies, ensuring alignment with scope, milestones, regulatory requirements and client expectations.
* Oversee schedule health checks, earned value analysis and variance management; drive recovery, contingency and re‑forecast actions as required.
* Produce and present timely reports on schedule performance, earned value, resource utilisation and outturn cost forecasts to inform senior leadership decisions.
* Provide strategic input to tender programmes, including programme assumptions, resource plans, risk assessments and cost forecast data to improve bid deliverability.
* Maintain portfolio‑level resource forecasts and capacity plans to support business unit resourcing strategy and recruitment priorities.
* Embed planning governance, data integrity and configuration control in planning systems; assure compliance with standards and auditable baselines.
* Facilitate integrated planning and risk workshops to identify programme risks, opportunities and mitigation measures, escalating critical issues to leadership.
* Drive continuous improvement and digital adoption in planning and reporting to enhance predictability, efficiency and decision support across the business.
Qualifications & Experience
Essential
* 10+ year experience in project planning and scheduling, ideally within design and build water and/or wastewater programmes.
* Degree/HNC/HND in Engineering, Project Management, or a related subject.
* Strong understanding of UK water sector and project delivery requirements.
* Proven ability to lead and develop teams in a fast‑paced environment.
* Proficient in planning software (e.g., Primavera P6, MS Project).
* Excellent organisational, commercial, and communication skills.
* Experience with project controls, cost engineering, and financial operations.
* Familiarity with different contracting environments and commercial models.
Desirable
* Membership of a relevant professional body.
* Six Sigma Yellow Belt certification.
Our Commitment to Equality, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
We want you to be able to bring your best self to work every day which is why we take equality and inclusion seriously and hold ourselves to account for our actions. Our ambition is to be an employer of choice and provide a great place to work for all our people. We believe that by working together diverse people with different experiences develop the most innovative ideas. Equality, diversity and inclusion is at the heart of how we improve quality of life and we work closely with our people across six ED&I Workstreams: Age, Disability, Faith, Gender, LGBT+ and Race. A diverse and skilled workforce is essential to our success.
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