Senior Project Manger

Right across infrastructure, there’s a requirement to not only maintain, but also renew and reimagine. Whatever stage you’re at in your career, with us you’ll have an opportunity to grow and develop. Delivering essential infrastructure services for life, while being safety first and client and customer centric in a friendly, fun and respectful environment where you are encouraged to thrive. 

Where will you be working?

We help our clients safeguard the water supply, improve environmental performance and manage demand for future generations. We enhance and extend asset life, ensuring compliance with water quality and environmental standards.  We’re problem solvers with over 140 years of combined experience in engineering and infrastructure.

This role will be within our water and wastewater capital project delivery team. Our teams deliver large-scale capital programmes aimed at keeping water infrastructure resilient for the long-term while protecting the environment. 

Want to be a part of it?

What will you be doing?

As our Senior Project Manager, you'll take strategic responsibility for a portfolio of complex capital projects with a combined value exceeding £50m, delivered across both Clean Water and Wastewater sectors within the Southern Water Framework. You'll provide leadership, oversight, and direction to a team of Project Managers, ensuring safe, efficient, right‑first‑time delivery in line with all governance, assurance, contractual, and regulatory requirements. 

We'll need you to operate across the full project lifecycle, providing senior-level control and assurance over multiple concurrent projects. This includes programme leadership, risk and change management, commercial governance, and ensuring that each project team is supported, developed, and aligned to delivery expectations.

A key part of the role is acting as the primary escalation point for Southern Water, ensuring issues are resolved promptly, decisions are made with clarity, and communication remains consistent across all stakeholders. You'll build strong relationships with client leadership, operational teams, subcontractors, designers, local authorities, landowners, and other third parties.

• Lead and oversee a portfolio of capital projects totalling £50m+, ensuring delivery to scope, budget, programme, and quality expectations.
• Provide leadership, coaching, and development to Project Managers, supporting their growth, capability, and performance.
• Act as the senior escalation point for the client, resolving issues, managing risks, and ensuring transparent communication.
• Drive programme performance, overseeing schedules, dependencies, resource planning, and delivery sequencing across multiple projects.
• Ensure robust governance and assurance, including stage gate compliance, technical reviews, buildability assessments, and design approvals.
• Oversee NEC contract administration at a portfolio level, ensuring consistent management of Early Warnings, Compensation Events, and programme updates.
• Champion safety, quality, and operational excellence, ensuring high standards are maintained across all project teams.
• Lead stakeholder engagement, representing the delivery organisation at senior client forums and ensuring alignment across all parties.
• Drive commercial performance, including forecasting, cost reporting, financial governance, margin delivery, and portfolio-level budget control.
• Promote continuous improvement, knowledge sharing, and collaborative working across the wider delivery team.

What You’ll Bring

• Do you have extensive experience delivering capital projects within infrastructure or regulated environments, ideally water sector?
• Have you got proven leadership of multiple concurrent projects or programmes, ideally at £20m–£50m+ scale?
• Do you have a strong background in complex civils, pipelines, rising mains, trunk mains, tunnelling or similar infrastructure?
• Have you got experience managing multidisciplinary design teams, subcontractors, and senior client relationships?
• Do you have a deep understanding of project governance, assurance processes, and NEC contract mechanisms?
• Are you someone who has strong commercial acumen with experience overseeing budgets, forecasting, and financial performance?
• Are you able to lead, mentor, and develop Project Managers and wider delivery teams?
• Do you have a formal project management qualification (APM, PMQ, PRINCE2) or equivalent experience?
• Do you hold a full UK driving licence?