Associate - Engagement & Consultation

WSP; Liverpool; On-site; GBP 65,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

WSP is expanding its UK Engagement and Consultation team and seeking an experienced leader to shape how major projects connect with communities. You will drive engagement delivery across water, health, energy, and environmental sectors and build strategic client relationships.

Being part of the Planning and Consents business, you will lead distributed teams, oversee tender work, and push excellence and innovation in engagement practice on high-profile infrastructure programmes.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated experience in leading engagement delivery across large multidisciplinary infrastructure projects.
• At least degree-qualified or equivalent.
• Membership of relevant professional or trade body is desirable.
• Experience in the road, rail, utilities, water, environment or energy sectors.

Responsibilities

• Leading delivery of engagement and consultation activities across multidisciplinary projects.
• Assuming commercial responsibility for tender production and business development opportunities.
• Embedding global engagement best practices across projects.
• Advising project teams on stakeholder and community strategies for multi-disciplinary projects.
• Developing and implementing a competency-focused training programme for the team.
• Planning and delivering stakeholder communications and consultations, including risk management and public events.
• Project managing schemes including resourcing, budgets and programme delivery.
• Collaborating with multi-disciplinary teams to deliver projects.
• Acting as a people manager for engagement specialists.

Skills

Team leadership

Stakeholder engagement

Project management

Business development

Education

Degree-qualified

Job description

A little more about your role…

You’ll be joining WSP’s expanding UK wide Engagement and Consultation team of 75 plus as an experienced leader, where you’ll play a meaningful role in shaping how major projects connect with communities. Working on some of the UK’s largest infrastructure programmes—as well as projects across the water, health, energy and environmental sectors—you’ll help deliver engagement that is thoughtful, impactful and built on best practice.

Recent contract and framework wins across the water, transport, energy and environmental sectors underpin strong growth over the next three years, with clients including National Grid, East West Rail Co, Nuclear Waste Services, the Environment Agency and others.

As a member of the Engagement and Consultation Team within our Planning and Consents business, you will assist in leading engagement delivery across major UK infrastructure projects, shape regional delivery models, lead distributed teams, build strategic client relationships, and drive excellence and innovation in engagement practice.

Key Responsibilities:

• Managing and enabling your team to successfully deliver engagement and consultation activities across a range of multidisciplinary projects
• Having commercial responsibility for tender production and business development opportunities
• Identifying opportunities to embed global communications and engagement best practice
• Advising project teams and clients on stakeholder and community strategies for multi-disciplinary projects
• Developing and implementing the competency focussed training programme for the team
• Planning and delivering stakeholder communication and consultations, including managing risks and issues, organising and manage public information events, and managing outputs to achieve engagement and consultation objectives.
• Project managing schemes including resourcing, budget management and ensuring delivery to programme.
• Delivering projects including resources, budgets and risk, in order to ensure projects are delivered on time and to budget.
• Collaborating with multi-disciplinary teams to deliver projects.
• Acting as a people manager for engagement specialists.

Preferred qualifications / education:

• Demonstrated experience in leading the DCO engagement process across large multidisciplinary infrastructure projects.
• At least degree-qualified or equivalent
• Membership of relevant professional or trade body is desirable.
• Experience in the road, rail, utilities, water, environment or energy sectors.

Preferred competencies:

• Strong team player who has an enthusiastic and motivated attitude
• Proven line management experience including delivery of training initiatives
• Proven experience of effectively managing and building stakeholder relationships in complex environments.
• Effective decision-maker with ability to act on own initiative
• Persuasive influencer with ability to strike rapport and exert strong negotiation and problem-solving skills.
• Well ordered, structured approach to delivery of tasks, and flexible with ability to adapt within demanding and fast-changing environment.
• Excellent attention to detail and organisational skills to manage a varied workload.

The Consultancy hierarchy structure:

• Assistant Consultant → Consultant → Senior Consultant → Principal Consultant → Associate → Associate Director → Technical Director → Director

Find out more about our Engagement and Consultation team

To learn more about the work we do and the impact you could make, visit our Engagement and Consultation business page and explore what a career at WSP could offer you:
Stakeholder engagement and strategic communications | WSP

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