Costain Group
Planner

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Costain Secures Extensive Work in Water Sector for AMP 8 Investment Cycle
Costain have won extensive work across the water sector to support the AMP 8 investment cycle. We have been appointed by Northumbrian Water to the Living Water Enterprise to help shape and deliver its strategic infrastructure upgrade programme with contracts valued up to c.£670m to Costain over the next 15 years.
Role Overview
Reporting to the Planning Lead, the Planner will be responsible for ensuring the projects are kept on track by updating and maintaining the project programme. The role will be based initially on multiple live sites across County Durham, in the construction phase, monitoring the site delivery programme and updating the contractual submissions to Northumbrian Water. The programme will be maintained through the delivery phase to handover and then on to Completion.
Responsibilities
- Prepare robust contract programmes using the designated planning tool, that link design, procurement, construction, installation, commissioning and handover, in line with the project life cycle.
- Display and analyse the project Critical Path and advise the project team (Inc. client) of the results and any appropriate corrective action.
- Produce/maintain project baselines and execute change control process as appropriate.
- Regularly update schedules to reflect progress, change events, risks and opportunities.
- Produce fully logic linked programmes, ensuring alignment with NEC contract requirements.
- Support the site delivery team in the production and maintenance of short term lookahead programmes.
- All programmes and documentation to be produced to company practices and procedures.
- Manage several programmes and support other Planning Engineers/Junior Planning Engineers including supervision and checking of work to ensure that all work complies with company standards and procedures.
- Support implementation of project controls, including earned value analysis, reporting dashboards and performance metrics.
Reasons to use Rodeo
I’m in my final year doing Economics and I don’t know whether to apply for grad schemes now or do a masters first. What do you think?
Honest answer — it depends on where you want to end up. A lot of top grad schemes (Big 4, civil service, banking) don’t need a masters. Let’s look at the ones you’d be competitive for now, and we can decide if a masters actually adds anything.
Also worth knowing: most autumn 2026 applications are open now. Timing matters more than you think.
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Graduate Consultant — 2026 Scheme
Why you're a good match
StrongYour economics background and your summer at a regional bank line up with what PwC looks for on the consulting scheme. Applications close in four weeks.
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Why you're a good match
You’ve got the grades and the economics background, and your bank internship is exactly the experience this scheme looks for. Apply soon — deadlines close within the month.
Experience fit
Your summer at the bank plus your econometrics coursework map directly to the day-one responsibilities on this scheme — client modelling, market briefings, and deal support.
Only hits
No noise. No "maybe this fits." Just roles with a clear explanation of why they're right — and where to focus when applying.
Qualifications
Essential
- Proven experience in project planning within Civil engineering, utilities or major infrastructure.
- Construction / Engineering Experience.
- Understanding of NEC contract mechanisms and programme requirements.
- Ability to engage and build strong relationships with stakeholders, striving for mutual success.
- Able to work and learn quickly in a fast paced, fun and dynamic environment.
- Care about doing a great job and exceeding expectations with the quality of what you do.
- Flexibility and adaptability to be able to respond rapidly to unexpected events, having the ability to shape our responses appropriately.
- Excellent written and oral presentation skills to present complex interdependencies simply and clearly.
- Relevant engineering or project management qualification.
- CSCS.
- Full UK Driving licence.
Desirable
- Water industry experience.
- Enterprise working.
- Proficiency in Primavera P6.
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About Costain
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.


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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 application phase. We do share individual feedback following an interview.
Disability Confident Employer
A Disability Confident employer will generally offer an interview to any applicant that disclose 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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