Senior Engineer – Rail Consultant

Location: London (South West) plus remote working

Salary: £42-£52k/year dependent on experience and skills plus benefits

Overview

Cadenza Transport Consulting Ltd (“Cadenza”) requires a Senior Civil Engineer Rail Consultant to help develop early stage multidisciplinary rail projects for new stations and new routes from concept to outline design in the UK and occasionally overseas. Our work includes design, project management, stakeholder engagement and social value management as well as strategic asset management and general rail consultancy.

Cadenza is a highly respected micro-consultancy of nearly ten years that is now looking to grow. If you are the successful candidate, you will have a unique opportunity to get involved in every aspect of design development, project and business management. You will be working with two very experienced rail directors who are keen to share their experience and train you up to grow in this role so that you can rapidly take on more responsibility with their support. You will often be representing the business to clients, partners, third parties and the public.

Unless you already have appropriate skills and experience, you will be invited to join the highly-prized (Masters degree) Level 7 apprentice programme for an MSc in Rail Systems Engineering and Integration at the University of Birmingham, sponsored by Cadenza. This is a three-year course including several one-week residential modules, exams, and a final year project.

As a micro-consultancy, Cadenza does not currently have any offices, but anticipates establishing one in Sutton (London) or Epsom for part-time use and therefore you may need to travel to Sutton or Epsom for up to three days per week, working from home on the remaining days. This is expected to be a full time role but could be a part-time role for the right person with a minimum of three days per week.

Responsibilities – what you’ll be doing

The following is a list of core responsibilities, but because Cadenza is a micro organisation, you will inevitably have the opportunity to be engaged on all aspects of helping to run the business, win and deliver projects. You in turn will be trained and supported on the jobs until you feel confident in each task. You are not expected to already have experience of all of these, but you will need to be willing to learn any that you haven’t been involved with yet.

Winning work

• Review bid notices and identify potential opportunities
• Work with bid partner organisations to collate, review and edit CVs, submission forms, supporting documents
• Develop and run bid programmes, coordinating the inputs of supporting organisations
• Develop project cost estimate spreadsheets with inputs from others

Delivering work

• Source and summarise historical studies and reference information such as relevant standards, guides, and railway, environmental, land or other publicly available data relevant to the project sites
• Develop ideas for station layouts and route options in a variety of formats, from hand sketches, to Google Earth Pro, to CAD
• Review and challenge ideas, identifying risks and opportunities with each option
• Collate, clean and analyse data sets
• Develop and maintain risk, requirements, drawings, actions and other project registers
• Preparation and management of project programmes
• Prepare stakeholder engagement management plans
• Support the development and management of social value activities
• Prepare draft engineering management plans
• Prepare site visit risk assessments
• Prepare and manage project cost monitoring / reporting
• Prepare draft project reports, incorporating and editing inputs from supporting organisations
• Prepare interim and final project report presentations
• Deputise for the Engineering Manager on projects
• Manage regular team meetings, workshops
• Manage inputs from suppliers and partners

Business support

• Development of innovative decision support tools and processes to maintain our industry leadership
• Prepare draft invoices
• Preparation of marketing materials
• Input into continuously improving Cadenza’s policies
• Develop and maintain the company website (no experience necessary)
• Prepare and update material for RISQS registration

Requirements – what we’re looking for

Must have

• Permit or legal right to work in the UK
• Engineering degree in a relevant subject
• Chartered (or nearly chartered) Civil Engineer
• Minimum 7 years’ post-graduate experience in relevant engineering roles
• Minimum 3 years’ experience of the railway industry
• Proven ability to work both independently and as part of a close-working team
• Can sustainably work from home or other remote environment
• Can travel to client offices or project sites in the UK
• Can be away from home for up to a week at a time for occasional training courses or overseas visits
• Fluency in spoken and written English
• Demonstrable capability in handling and analysing data to identify patterns and anomalies or provide insights
• Demonstrable people skills
• Demonstrable creativity in problem-solving
• An appetite for continuous learning
• High competency in Microsoft Office products (Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint)

Should have

• Live within public transport commuting distance of Sutton (London) or Epsom
• More than five years’ experience in the railway industry
• Experience of railway project management
• Design and/or construction experience in railway civil engineering or multidisciplinary projects
• Understanding of Network Rail’s PACE processes
• Understanding of CSM/CDM principles in a railway environment
• Basic CAD skills
• UK Driving license

Could have

• BIM design capability
• 10 years’ experience in working as part of multidisciplinary railway projects
• International experience of rail engineering projects
• Experience of project commercial and contractual management
• MSc in Rail Systems Engineering or similar
• Ability to use CAD / InRail / ConceptStation or other similar computer drawing packages
• Experience of using Smartsheet software for project management
• Other marketable skills and experience to complement the Cadenza offer

Rewards – what you’ll get

• Salary £42-£52k/year dependent on experience and skills
• Sponsorship to achieve the world-renowned MSc in Rail Systems Engineering and Integration as a Level 7 apprentice
• 25 days’ leave per year (plus public holidays) or pro rata for part time
• Pension
• Pirkx membership with access to discounts, online healthcare and financial support, and many more benefits
• A breadth of business and project experiences you are unlikely to get exposure to in a large consultancy

Reply - how to let us know you are interested

Please complete the online form by clicking the ‘Apply’ button.

You will be asked to provide:

• your contact details
• information about your current or most recent employment role
• confirmation that you can comply with selected mandatory requirements
• a brief explanation of why you are applying

You will also be required to upload your current CV, which should be a maximum of 3 x A4 pages including (but not limited to):

Summary profile (max 15 lines)

• All academic and professional qualifications since leaving school
• Full employment history
• Relevant project experience specifying your role(s) and responsibilities
• Languages understood, and the extent to which you can speak/read/write them

The form will allow you to email a copy of your responses to yourself for your records.