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Project Controls Apprenticeship
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Project Controls Apprenticeship
AWE PLC
Location: Berkshire (RG7 4PR)
Closing date: 19 days (Sunday 1 November 2026)
Posted on: 12 October 2026
Summary
As a Project Controls Apprentice at AWE, you will help project teams plan, monitor, and deliver important work across the business. You’ll build your skills while learning what project controls involves and where your interests could take you.
Wage: £24,500 a year
Minimum wage rates (opens in new tab):
- A starting salary of £24,500 yearly, increasing to £26,000 in Year 2, with further annual salary increases throughout your apprenticeship, subject to satisfactory performance and achievement of apprenticeship milestones.
- Market-leading contributory pension scheme
- Generous paid holiday entitlement of 270 hours per year, inclusive of Bank Holidays, plus every other Friday off as part of AWE’s flexible working pattern.
Training
Training course: Project controls professional (level 6)
Hours: 9 day fortnight. 33 hrs on the short week, 8hrs 15 mins per day. 41 hrs on the long week, 8hrs 15 mins per day Monday to Thursday and Fridays 8hrs.
Start date: Wednesday 1 September 2027
Duration: 4 years
Positions available: 5
Work
Most of your apprenticeship is spent working. You’ll learn on the job by getting hands-on experience.
What you'll do at work:
As a Project Controls Apprentice at AWE, you will help project teams plan, monitor, and deliver important work across the business. You’ll build your skills while learning what project controls involves and where your interests could take you.
During the apprenticeship, you could support major programmes, infrastructure projects, and other teams that help AWE operate effectively. You’ll work with experienced colleagues, build strong working relationships, and learn how projects are planned, tracked, and kept on course.
In simple terms, project controls is about helping a project stay on track. This could include supporting with project plans, schedules, costs, risks, changes, and reporting, so teams understand what needs to happen, when it needs to happen, and whether anything needs attention.
As you move through different placements around the business, you will learn about areas such as:
- How large projects are broken down into smaller parts, including people, work, and costs
- Creating and checking project schedules, including estimating how long tasks may take
- Setting and maintaining project baselines, which are the agreed plans used to track progress
- Measuring how well a project is progressing against the plan
- Regular reporting, including helping teams understand monthly progress updates
- Cost forecasting, which means helping estimate how much a project may cost in the future
- Understanding differences between the plan and what is actually happening
- Supporting project changes and understanding their impact on time, cost, and delivery
- Using data and statistics to support project decisions
- Using technical information, including engineering drawings, to support project planning
- Estimating the time, cost, and resources needed for project activities
You’ll start with an induction to help you understand AWE and the work we do. You’ll then move into your first project placement, where you’ll begin applying your skills in a real working environment. You’ll be supported by placement mentors and experienced colleagues while also studying towards your degree-level apprenticeship.
Where you'll work:
Atomic Weapons Establishment
Aldermaston
Reading
Berkshire
RG7 4PR
Training
Apprenticeships include time away from working for specialist training. You’ll study to gain professional knowledge and skills.
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Training provider: AWE PLC
Training course: Project controls professional (level 6)
What you'll learn:
- Determine, implement, adapt, and refine the project controls procedures, methods, and systems incorporating the relevant employer organisation management systems and procedures including quality, data management and security, document and version control, and record keeping.
- Use project controls related software and IT systems for tasks such as: planning and scheduling, cost management, cost and risk analysis, estimating, progress and performance monitoring, and reporting; identify and select the right software package for the task.
- Application of and the integration of, software and IT systems to enhance the level of data processing. For example, the use of technology including BIM.
- Technical and engineering principles: interpret technical information from different sources, identify and know the correct data and elements to monitor and control to ensure the basis for any recommendations are credible; review and interpret technical project documents (including scopes of work and engineering drawings, etc.).
- Breakdown and coding structures: develop and implement coding structures as well as critiquing and reviewing technical coding and breakdown structures to ensure they provide a basis for project control.
- Lead the creation of comprehensive project control plans and reporting frameworks that identify the right contextual elements to track and the working assumptions to use, in order to generate meaningful controls data, ensuring that project controls deliverables are achievable and in line with project objectives.
- Lead the preparation of the strategy for the development and maintenance of the baseline for control taking into account scope definition and schedule, risk, and cost (ensuring alignment between cost and schedule using the coding structures).
- Implement and enforce project control change procedures, judge against evidence, and decide if a change is within or without scope, evaluate its impact on profitability, and make recommendations or implement the change in a manner that reflects its scale.
- Ensure that project control work is undertaken in accordance with HSE regulations and requirements including applying knowledge of HSE with awareness of how it impacts on project control schedules and costs and ensuring that the schedule and resourcing for a project meets the requirements of regulations (including CDM and safety) and can be delivered in accordance with the requirements, i.e., ensure everything is in place and accounted for to ensure the project can run safely.
- Identify opportunities within their remit in projects to contribute to net carbon zero and environmental sustainability, and then take action to minimise the environmental impact of the project.
- Undertake project control work in accordance with ethics, codes of conduct, and duty of care.
- Data assurance: challenge, verify, and validate data reports and data to ensure their integrity, timeliness, and technical appropriateness.
- Identify stakeholders across the project, for example: those to work with when developing estimates, schedules, and plans and those to deliver controls information and recommendations to.
- Modify communication style and method to stakeholders, for example, to gather information needed.
- Risk management and analysis: undertake quantitative and qualitative analysis of risks and lead regular reviews of risks and related assumptions in the project risk register such as questioning their presence and relevance in order to underpin the management of the project risk register.
- Identify opportunities to use data analysis techniques to benefit project controls delivery such as automating repetitive processes or improving data quality or extracting deeper insights and validate the related data analysis to ensure correct interpretation against which effective decisions can be made.
- Commercial matters: identification and application of subcontract/supplier deliverables to project control in order to provide the ability to monitor subcontractor/supplier performance and create, record, and store project controls content in support of legal and contractual requirements.
- Create project controls content to inform tenders and evaluate invitations to tender received and bid responses.
- Prepare an estimating framework and make recommendations on classes of estimate to meet project needs at different project stages.
- Use an evidence-based approach to select and apply the most suitable estimating technique for the purpose and undertake estimate assurance, cost risk analysis, prepare related detailed basis of estimate narratives that are evidenced and explanatory - setting out the risks, assumptions, probabilities, uncertainties, and contingencies in order to provide a sound basis for decision making.
- Prepare planning and scheduling strategic frameworks and make recommendations on different levels of plans and schedules to meet different project needs for example, milestones or detailed engineer schedules.
- Use an evidence-based approach to create credible, achievable control schedules, applying relevant assumptions and contingency and undertaking schedule assurance, schedule risk analysis, and compile a related basis of schedule that is explanatory, setting out the risks, assumptions, probabilities, uncertainties, contingencies, dependencies, and constraints.
- Model the potential for efficiency against time, cost, and quality, review, and make recommendations.
- Apply cost engineering practice to: recast the estimate and set the budget baseline and select and apply proven cost control techniques to capture actual commitment and expenditure data with appropriate use of accruals; and integrate cost and schedule data to develop project cashflow projections and assessments of value of work done over time.
- Monitor and control project progress and performance by establishing a progress baseline and selecting and applying the right analysis techniques (for example, earned value analysis) for the size and complexity of the project.
- Control and monitor project progress and performance by selecting and applying the right analysis techniques (for example, earned value analysis) for the size and complexity of the project.
- Identify variations from the progress baseline and assess their potential impact, explain the variations to the project, portfolio, or programme manager.
- Communicate and justify own conclusions and recommendations for example for project recovery or to lead to improved project delivery by influencing and, when necessary, challenging key stakeholders to make informed decisions.
- Key stakeholders include the project manager, portfolio manager, or programme manager.
- Steer across project controls functions in accordance with organisational core values and specific guidelines; mentor and coach team members such as Project Controls Technicians to meet project control requirements.
- Apply continuous improvement approaches, for example, using emerging technologies and lessons learnt from previous projects.
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