Senior Planner - Water

Arcadis; Bristol; On-site; GBP 50,000 - 75,000; Full time

Job summary

Arcadis is seeking a Planning Manager in Bristol to lead planning efforts across environmental sector programmes. The role involves developing planning governance, collaborating with stakeholders for resource optimisation, and ensuring compliance with project requirements. Candidates should have significant experience in project planning, preferably in infrastructure, and a degree in a relevant field. Proficiency in tools like Safran and Primavera P6 is essential. Arcadis is committed to equality, diversity, and providing a supportive workplace for all staff.

Qualifications

• Experience in project planning and scheduling within complex infrastructure.
• Strong understanding of UK infrastructure delivery contexts.
• Proficient in project controls and cost engineering.
• Leadership skills in a fast-paced environment.
• Excellent organizational and commercial skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead a specialist planning team for major programmes.
• Implement new planning processes and tools.
• Oversee schedule performance and variance management.
• Produce reports on schedule performance for leadership.
• Facilitate integrated planning workshops.

Skills

Project planning and scheduling

Team leadership

Planning software (e.g., Safran, Primavera P6, MS Project)

Financial operations

Excellent communication skills

Education

Degree/HNC/HND in Engineering, Project Management, or a related subject

Tools

Safran

Primavera P6

MS Project

Job description

Arcadis is the world's leading company delivering sustainable design, engineering, and consultancy solutions for natural and built assets.

We are more than 34,000 people, in over 30 countries, dedicated to improving quality of life. Everyone has an important role to play. With the power of many curious minds, together we can solve the world’s most complex challenges and deliver more impact together.

Role description

The Arcadis Climate Adaptation programme delivers resilience projects across our clients’ portfolios, programmes and projects across England and Wales. This strategic role will develop and implement robust planning governance, processes, and systems; integrate programme schedules; and drive continuous improvement in delivery performance. Our Programme & Project Management team is seeking an experienced Planning Manager to join us as a leader who will build and mature our planning capability, while also providing hands‑on planning leadership for major delivery across the environment sector and with local authorities.

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 supporting major environment‑sector and local authority 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.

Essential Qualifications

• Sufficient years’ experience in project planning and scheduling, ideally within complex infrastructure, environment‑sector and/or local authority programmes and/or water sector.
• Degree/HNC/HND in Engineering, Project Management, or a related subject.
• Strong understanding of UK infrastructure delivery contexts, including governance, regulatory and stakeholder requirements across the environment sector and local authorities.
• Proven ability to lead and develop teams in a fast‑paced environment.
• Proficient in planning software (e.g., Safran, 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 Qualifications

• 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.