Technical Author

Job Title: Technical Author
Location: Hybrid working across the East Midlands, West Midlands, South West England and Wales.
Remuneration: Daily rate of £600
Contract Details: Temporary contract until 31st December 2026

Our client is seeking an experienced Technical Author to play a pivotal role in the redevelopment and standardisation of technical specifications. This role is crucial to the success of future capital works programmes, ensuring specifications are clear, consistent and commercially robust.

The successful candidate will be responsible for reviewing existing documentation, identifying opportunities for improvement, benchmarking against industry best practice and producing a suite of fit-for-purpose specifications that support procurement and tendering activities.

Key responsibilities include:

• Reviewing and assessing existing technical specifications to identify inconsistencies, ambiguities and areas for improvement.
• Evaluating current approaches and considering alternative methods and industry best practice to improve specification quality and usability.
• Engaging with internal stakeholders to gather engineering, operational, commercial and procurement requirements.
• Working collaboratively with a broad range of internal and external stakeholders to ensure specifications are practical, robust and aligned with business objectives.
• Translating complex technical requirements into clear, structured and tender-ready documentation.
• Producing a revised suite of specifications that reduce supplier queries and enhance the quality and consistency of tender submissions.
• Ensuring specifications are commercially robust, technically accurate and suitable for long-term use.
• Maintaining document governance, quality assurance and version control throughout the programme.

The ideal candidate will possess significant experience developing technical specifications for major utility, infrastructure or civil engineering projects.

Essential requirements include:

• Proven track record authoring technical specifications for procurement and tendering processes.
• Minimum 10-15 years' relevant experience within electricity distribution, utility infrastructure or related sectors.
• Extensive knowledge of utility construction activities, including excavation, trenching, cable installation, ducting, jointing, backfilling and reinstatement works.
• Strong understanding of utility construction standards, legislation, codes of practice and regulatory requirements.
• Demonstrable experience translating engineering, operational and commercial requirements into clear supplier-facing documentation.
• Excellent technical writing, document management and quality assurance capabilities.
• Strong stakeholder management skills with the ability to engage and influence both internal and external parties.
• Experience working on large-scale infrastructure or utility programmes.

The successful candidate will be a highly experienced utility infrastructure professional with a strong technical background and proven expertise in specification development.

Suitable profiles may include:

• Technical Standards Manager
• Engineering Assurance Manager
• Specification Manager
• Asset Standards Engineer
• Principal Engineer
• Utility Infrastructure Subject Matter Expert (SME)
• Construction Standards Lead
• Engineering Governance Lead

This assignment requires an individual capable of reviewing and challenging existing specifications, identifying opportunities for improvement, applying industry best practice and delivering a comprehensive, fit-for-purpose specification suite by January 2027.

The role will be responsible for producing a revised suite of technical specifications that:

• Improve supplier understanding and reduce clarification requests.
• Eliminate ambiguity, duplication and inconsistency.
• Align with current industry standards and best practice.
• Support efficient procurement and tender evaluation activities.
• Provide clear and practical guidance for suppliers and internal stakeholders alike.
• Create a consistent, commercially robust specification framework to support future capital project delivery.

This is an excellent opportunity for a highly experienced utility infrastructure professional to make a lasting impact on a major specification improvement programme, driving greater clarity, consistency and procurement effectiveness across a significant portfolio of infrastructure works.

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