Planner

Location: Reading (Hybrid - 1 day a week on-site)

Duration: Long-Term Freelance

Rate: Competitive Daily Rate (Strictly Inside IR35)

We are currently recruiting for a Project Planner with specialist water industry experience to join a tier-one engineering leader. In this role, you will oversee and drive the planning functions across a diverse portfolio of major water infrastructure and environmental schemes throughout the Thames Water region. This position offers excellent hybrid flexibility, requiring you to be based out of the Reading office just one day per week.

Working within a fast-paced and collaborative environment, you will be responsible for creating, maintaining, and managing robust project schedules from pre-construction through to delivery. Your day-to-day will involve:

• Baseline Scheduling: Developing and updating fully resourced, logically linked project programmes (using Primavera P6) in line with project specifications and milestones.

• Progress Tracking: Monitoring planned vs. actual progress, identifying critical path movements, and flagging potential delays or resource clashes early.

• Change Management: Assessing the impact of compensation events, variations, and scope changes on the master programme, ensuring full contract compliance (NEC4).

• Reporting & Analytics: Generating clear progress reports, dashboards, and earned value analysis (EVA) metrics for both internal management and client-facing updates.

• Stakeholder Collaboration: Working closely with project managers, estimators, and site delivery teams to ensure the construction methodology is accurately reflected in the schedule.

Due to the technical demands and client-specific frameworks of this programme, we can only consider candidates who meet the following criteria:

• Water Industry Expertise: Proven experience working as a Planner within the UK water sector (AMP frameworks, clean water, wastewater, or treatment works projects is essential).

• Software Proficiency: Advanced, hands-on experience utilizing Primavera P6 to manage complex civil engineering or infrastructure programmes.

• Contract Knowledge: A strong working knowledge of NEC contracts (specifically NEC3 or NEC4) and how variations impact the project schedule.

• Commercial & Delivery Awareness: A solid background understanding site buildability, logic linking, and resource loading.

• Commutable to Reading: Ability to travel to the Reading office one day per week for collaborative team meetings and project reviews.

Randstad CPE values diversity and promotes equality. No terminology in this advert is intended to discriminate against any of the protected characteristics that fall under the Equality Act 2010. We encourage and welcome applications from all sections of society and are more than happy to discuss reasonable adjustments and/or additional arrangements as required to support your application.

Candidates must be eligible to live and work in the UK.

For the purposes of the Conduct Regulations 2003, when advertising permanent vacancies we are acting as an Employment Agency, and when advertising temporary/contract vacancies we are acting as an Employment Business.