Socioeconomic Consultant

ERM is the world’s largest specialist sustainability consultancy, with over 50 years of experience helping organizations navigate complex environmental, social, and governance challenges. We bring together a global community of experts to deliver meaningful impact for our clients and the planet.

Our Consulting Delivery Hub (CDH) in India is a critical part of ERM’s global consulting model enabling scalable, high-quality delivery across regions and service lines. CDH teams work in close partnership with regional consultants to support global client projects, providing specialist expertise, driving consistency, and enhancing delivery efficiency across our most important programmes.

As part of the Consulting Delivery Hub, you will collaborate with colleagues worldwide, contribute to complex sustainability projects, and play a key role in shaping the future of global consulting delivery.

Why this role matters?

As a Socioeconomic Consultant, you will support ERM's global Capital Project Delivery (CPD) work by leading discrete socio-economic workstreams and producing high-quality analysis, impact assessment and social value inputs to major infrastructure, energy, mining and transition projects. You will work within the Social Sustainability sub-team, partnering with regional consultants across NEBU and EMEA - including Impact Assessment, Stakeholder Engagement, Sustainable Finance, Human Rights and Political Risk leads - to deliver defensible socio-economic baselines, impact assessments and mitigation frameworks that de-risk projects and maximise positive community outcomes. This role is critical to scaling ERM's socio-economic delivery capacity, supporting CPD projects to secure consents, achieve social licence to operate, and meet growing lender, regulator and community expectations for robust socio-economic evidence.

What your impact is?

• Support socio-economic baselines and impact assessment chapters.

• Lead economic appraisal, quantification of jobs and GVA effects, and social value analysis to strengthen client business cases, funding bids and consent applications.

• Manage discrete workstreams and small project teams (1-2 people), coordinating CDH and regional inputs to deliver on time, on budget and to quality.

• Act as a trusted day-to-day point of contact for clients on socio-economic workstreams, presenting findings clearly and responding to client and regulator queries.

• Contribute socio-economic evidence across CPD sectors.

• Support bids, proposals and thought leadership.

What will you bring?

• Bachelor's degree in economics, human geography, sociology, planning, public policy, development studies or a closely related social science discipline; a master's is desirable.

• 2-3 years' relevant experience in consulting, research or policy, with a demonstrable track record of delivering socio-economic analysis, impact assessment or economic appraisal outputs.

• Proven ability to independently draft socio-economic baseline and impact assessment chapters for EIA/ESIA, or comparable economic appraisal / business case outputs.

• Sound working knowledge of UK/Irish EIA and consenting regimes (e.g. DCO, Section 36, TCPA, Planning (Wales) Act) and/or international frameworks such as the IFC Performance Standards and Equator Principles.

• Strong quantitative and qualitative research skills, including confident use of Census, ONS/NRS/NISRA/CSO, Nomis, BRES, ASHE and IMD datasets, and application of HM Treasury Green Book principles to economic.

• Experience managing discrete workstreams or small teams, including planning, budgeting, quality review and client liaison.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to translate complex socio-economic evidence into clear outputs for regulators, clients and communities.

• Strong commercial awareness and ability to work efficiently within scope, budget and time constraints.

Preferred skills & competencies

• Experience delivering socio-economic chapters for NSIPs, DCOs or comparable major infrastructure consenting regimes, or ESIA socio-economics chapters aligned with IFC PS/Equator Principles.

• Exposure to Social Impact Assessment, social value, community benefits, just transition or deliberative engagement approaches.

• Experience working in a global delivery, shared service or hub environment across time zones.

• Familiarity with automation, AI-enabled tools or GIS to support socio-economic analysis and reporting.

Key responsibilities

• Lead the preparation of socio-economic baselines drawing on Census, labour market, deprivation, housing, health, tourism and industry datasets at national, regional, local and neighbourhood scales.

• Identify and assess likely significant socio-economic effects (employment, GVA, population and demographic change, housing, community infrastructure, tourism and recreation, sociocultural effects, sense of place) across construction, operation and decommissioning phases.

• Apply and, where appropriate, refine assessment methodologies covering sensitivity/magnitude, mitigation hierarchy, cumulative effects and distributional impacts.

• Draft scoping reports, EIA/ESIA socio-economic chapters, standalone Socio-economic Statements (SES), technical notes, and inputs to ESMPs, Livelihood Restoration Frameworks and community benefit strategies.

• Deliver quantitative economic modelling of direct, indirect and induced jobs and GVA, and qualitative assessment of wider socio-economic, sociocultural and tourism effects.

• Support stakeholder mapping and engagement and integrate stakeholder feedback into socio-economic scoping and assessment.

• Manage discrete workstreams end-to-end - including scoping, planning, delivery, quality review and client communication - and coordinate CDH inputs with regional teams.

• Contribute to bids, proposals and internal capability building, including standardising templates, tools and methodologies.

• Maintain current knowledge of UK, Irish and international socio-economic policy and guidance (e.g. ISEP SIA guidance, IFC PS, HM Treasury Green Book, Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act, NPF4).

• Adhere to ERM's Health & Safety, ethics and quality management systems in all project work.