Senior Planner

PMO Senior Planner

Working hours - Full time 37 hours per week (flexible working arrangements including part time will be considered)

Fixed Term Contract or Secondment - 2 years

Salary - from £47,685 to £56,100 (depending on experience)

Location - hybrid working with office location at Pity Me, Durham

At Northumbrian Water, our customers are at the heart of everything we do. Every day, we provide essential water and wastewater services to millions of people, and we are committed to delivering reliable, affordable and sustainable services while supporting our communities and protecting the environment. By focusing on the outcomes that matter most to our customers, we are also working towards our ambition to be the National Leader in sustainable water and wastewater services.

We are building a dedicated team to create our PR29 business plan, which will set out what we will deliver for customers and the environment, and the investment needed to achieve it, between 2030 and 2035. We are recruiting a number of key roles to join this team, offering an exciting opportunity to work with colleagues across Northumbrian Water, influence important decisions and help develop an ambitious and compelling plan that delivers lasting value for our customers and communities.

About the role

As Senior Planner for Northumbrian Water Group’s PR29 business plan for AMP9, you will lead the planning and scheduling work that brings scope, cost, regulatory requirements and delivery assumptions together into a coherent, cost-loaded integrated programme in OPC/P6.

You will set the planning approach and standards and assure schedule quality and integration, and provide PMO and senior stakeholders with a clear, defensible view of dates, dependencies, change and schedule risk. You will define and maintain the PR29 planning framework in OPC/P6, including WBS, coding, calendars, milestone conventions, logic standards, baseline/version control and reporting rules.

You will lead a team of two PR29 Planners, allocating workstreams, setting priorities, reviewing outputs for quality and consistency, and supporting their performance and development, giving practical feedback and guidance on OPC/P6, schedule analysis, assurance and reporting practice.

You will integrate and assure the PR29 programme for logical integrity, critical and near-critical paths, open ends, constraints, interfaces, cross-workstream dependencies, cost-loading and data quality. You will work with Tactical Planning to translate investment scope, options and assumptions into a coherent schedule and maintain consistency across workstreams.

As Senior Planner, you will work with Estimating and Investment Planning to align schedule phasing, cost data and agreed scenarios, challenging inconsistencies before they affect the submission position. You will also work with Regulation, Delivery and other stakeholders to understand key requirements, milestones and changes, and assess their impact on the integrated schedule.

You will lead forward-looking schedule analysis, including critical path, float erosion, variance, forecast movement, change impacts, risks and opportunities, and turn findings into clear early warnings and recommendations.

About you

If you have strong Primavera planning experience, hands-on experience building and controlling complex, integrated schedules in P6, OPC or an equivalent enterprise scheduling environment, we would love to hear from you!

You will have good scheduling fundamentals, a deep practical understanding of CPM logic, critical path and float, constraints, dependencies, baselines, progress, forecasting and change control. You will have integrated programme assurance experience and can review multi-workstream schedules for logic, interfaces, data quality and overall credibility.

You will have experience of cost-loading schedules and working closely with estimating, cost or investment teams to align schedule and financial data. You have a schedule quality-assurance mindset, with experience identifying and resolving weak logic, open ends, excessive constraints and other schedule-health issues.

You have demonstrable experience leading or coordinating other planners or schedulers, including coaching, quality review and constructive challenge. You can communicate complex schedule information credibly to senior stakeholders and turn analysis into clear decisions and actions. You have good reporting and data literacy, with the ability to provide and explain controlled schedule information and work effectively with reporting and Power BI teams.

We will be hosting an Open Evening session to learn more about PR29 roles at our Northumbria House office in Pity Me, Durham on Tuesday 10th November 2026. Please register your interest at: [email protected]

Please note this role will require a DBS to be completed prior to employment.

This role has also been defined as a safety or security critical role and as a condition of a formal offer of employment you’ll be required to undergo a drug and alcohol test.

Prospective employees and agency workers in defined safety and security critical roles will be required to undertake a drug and alcohol test after the job offer has been made. This will be prior to or within four weeks of their start date.

Prospective employees and agency workers who fail a pre-employment urine drug screen will have their sample analysed by the Company appointed laboratory as a matter of course. Failing a pre-employment drugs or alcohol test may lead to the job offer being revoked.