Planning Controller

PMO Planning Controller

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 £43,265 to £50,900 (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

Northumbrian Water Group is developing its PR29 business plan for AMP9 and has a new opportunity for a Planning Controller. In this role, you will own defined workstreams within the cost-loaded programme in OPC/P6, working with Tactical Planning, Estimating, Investment Planning, Regulation and Delivery teams to turn scope, assumptions and milestones into logically robust, traceable schedules.

You will keep the plan current, analyse change and emerging risks, and provide reliable schedule information for decision-making and regulatory submission, identifying movement, dependencies, pressure on key dates and emerging issues before they become critical.

You will work with integrated planning, connecting scope, cost, milestones and assumptions across Tactical Planning, Estimating, Investment Planning, Regulation and Delivery teams.

You will review progress and forecast information and assess how changes in scope, decisions, estimates or delivery assumptions affect key dates and downstream activities.

You will carry out schedule-health and quality checks on your own work, resolving logic gaps, open ends, inappropriate constraints, inconsistent coding and incomplete data. You will provide controlled schedule extracts, analysis and commentary for Power BI and other reporting outputs, explaining key movement, variance, assumptions and issues.

About you

If you have hands-on P6/OPC scheduling experience building and maintaining logically linked schedules within a wider programme, we want to hear from you!

You will have practical understanding of CPM logic, critical path and float, WBS, milestones, constraints, baselines, progress and forecasting. You will have experience of cost-loaded schedules, or experience working closely with estimating and cost teams to align schedule and financial information.

You will have experience carrying out schedule analysis and quality checks and explaining the causes and consequences of schedule movement. You are familiar with enterprise schedule coding, data structures and controls, including WBS, activity codes/UDFs and version management.

You can work accurately at pace and collaborate effectively across planning, estimating, investment, regulation and delivery stakeholders. You have good attention to detail and data discipline, including maintaining traceable assumptions and an audit-ready schedule position.

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: recruitment@nwl.co.uk

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.