Costain Group
Commercial & Cost Controller
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Commercial & Cost Controller
Working with our multi-discipline Engineering Services Team, as our Commercial & Cost Controller, you will provide consolidated commercial, cost control, and administrative support, handling routine cost engineering activities, contract administration, document control, and operational.
The role is pivotal in giving Project Managers and the leadership team the visibility and control they need to manage the Engineering Capability.
It's a full-time role and will be based at our offices in London or Manchester, typically 3 days a week, with a flexible approach to home working on the other days to promote wellbeing. #LI-MR1
Responsibilities
Cost Control & Reporting
- Run individual project timesheet reports monthly to support the AFP and CLR processes, and cross-check ledgers against timesheets to ensure accuracy of cost capture.
- Provide weekly cost control on projects that require it, including work-winning activity, monitoring spend versus budget, and flagging variances early to Project Managers.
- Monitor suspense bookings on a weekly cycle and manage their clearance, and chase missing or unapproved timesheets across the consultancy.
Contract & Commercial Administration
- Manage the ITA tracker on a weekly basis, ensuring all internal trading agreements are logged, progressed, and closed out appropriately.
- Support the Applications for Payment and billing process on the monthly cycle, progressing toward independent ownership of simpler AFPs once trained.
- Draft contractual communications on a daily basis under the direction of Project Managers and the commercial lead.
- Maintain contract risk registers on a weekly basis and support the change control process.
- Generating POs and maintaining the PO tracker.
Governance, Document Control & Records
- Provide general document control across the consultancy on a daily basis.
- Maintain the CEL SharePoint weekly, ensuring it is current, well-structured, and a reliable single source of truth for the team.
- Maintain audit-ready records and filing across the consultancy, with monthly checks to ensure ongoing compliance.
- Take minutes at weekly commercial meetings and follow up on actions.
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Demand & Resource Forecasting
- Maintain the CEL SOP demand register and demand forecast tool weekly, chasing SOP demand data submissions from the wider team to keep the forecast current.
- Collate CEL contributions from all CLRs in line with the CLR cycle to support future reporting requirements.
Internal Process & Set-Up
- Raise and track BU set-up forms via E1 on an ad hoc basis, chasing through to completion.
- Raise and track requests to add individuals to BUs via E1, chasing through to completion.
Knowledge, Skills, and Experience
Essential
- Proven administrative and organisational skills with the ability to manage multiple parallel workstreams across different contracts and stakeholders.
- Commercial awareness and an understanding of the relationship between time, cost, and contract on engineering or construction projects.
- Excellent MS Office skills, particularly Excel for data manipulation, reconciliation, and reporting, and SharePoint for document and content management.
- Confident communicator, comfortable chasing colleagues at all levels for information, timesheet approvals, and data submissions.
- Attention to detail and a methodical approach to financial data, reconciliations, and document control.
- Self-starter able to operate effectively in a startup-style environment where processes are still maturing.
Desirable
- Experience working in a consultancy, engineering, or construction environment.
- Familiarity with Group finance and project systems (E1 / JD Edwards or equivalent ERP), and timesheet/booking systems.
- Working knowledge of Earned Value principles and standard cost engineering techniques.
- Exposure to AFP/billing processes, internal trading agreements, or similar inter-company contracting arrangements.
- Experience of minute taking and drafting formal contractual communications.
- Awareness of relevant Health & Safety legislation.
Qualifications
- Degree or equivalent relevant experience. AAT, business administration, or project controls qualifications would be advantageous but are not essential.
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About Us
Costain helps to improve people’s lives with integrated, leading edge, smart infrastructure solutions across the UK’s energy, water, transportation, and defence markets. We help our clients improve their business performance by increasing capacity, improving customer service, safeguarding security, enhancing resilience, decarbonising, and delivering increased efficiency. Our vision is to be the UK’s leading smart infrastructure solutions company. We will achieve this by focusing on blue-chip clients whose major spending plans are underpinned by strategic national needs, regulatory commitments, legislation, or essential performance requirements. We offer our clients leading edge solutions that are digitally optimised through the following five services which cover the whole lifecycle of their assets: future-shaping strategic consultancy; consultancy and advisory; digital technology solutions; asset optimisation and complex programme delivery.
Our culture and values underpin everything we do.
Application Process
Costain appreciate the time and effort taken when applying for one of our positions but, due to the high volume of responses, we are unable to provide individual feedback on candidates at the application phase.
We do share individual feedback following an interview.
A Disability Confident employer will generally offer an interview to any applicant that discloses they have a disability and meets the minimum criteria for the job as defined by the employer.
It is important to note that in certain recruitment situations such as high-volume, seasonal, and high-peak times, the employer may wish to limit the overall numbers of interviews offered to both disabled people and non-disabled people.
For more details, please go to the Disability Confident website: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/disability-confident-campaign
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