Role: Associate Director - Catchment Science

Location: UK - Remote

Salary range: £55,000 - £75,000 plus additional benefits

Role ID: 2024 - 2203

About Ricardo

Our vision is to create a safe and sustainable world.

Ricardo is a leading consultancy combining energy, climate change, environmental and chemical risk expertise with strong IT and economics capability. Operating across the world, we work in partnership with our customers to help transform the way they work, empowering business leaders with award winning consultancy advice. With unrivalled sector insight and a reputation for producing innovative solutions, we offer a stimulating and rewarding environment in which to work.

Purpose

Our excellent track record in supporting the water industry and airports is resulting in substantial and exciting growth of our Water & Environment Team. We have established long-term relationships with many of the UK’s water companies and airport operators. Consequently, we are servicing multiple environmental frameworks and some sizeable capital water and wastewater projects. Our growing focus on water and environmental solutions, alongside a wider array of consultancy services, means we are seeking to appoint an Associate Director with both a strong technical background and the ability to manage larger projects throughout their life-cycle.

Key accountabilities

• You will work as part of a wider team of multi-disciplinary water and environmental experts that includes specialists in the fields of water resources, hydro-ecology, ground and surface water hydrology, flood risk, geomorphology, water quality, aquatic and terrestrial ecology, natural capital, environmental impact assessment and planning.
• Elements of all of these disciplines can feature in our work which can include a focus on water resource investigations, strategic water resources (SROs), drought planning, surface water runoff and wastewater investigations.
• As such, critical to this role is understanding various environmental strands and linkages to support us in helping solve sometimes complex environmental challenges with a well organised and collaborative approach.
• Together with technical delivery and leadership skills, you will have an ambition to help drive our business forward by delivering excellent services and winning new work.
• A key requirement is for the effective oversight of sizeable specialist projects and technical elements of work within wider multi-disciplinary programmes.
• This is to include experience of leading on bidding through to project execution and close-out.
• Acting in a technical lead role in an appropriate technical discipline, the post-holder will have the ability to clearly communicate within technical delivery teams and to clients.
• The role will also require some commercial understanding and the ability to own client and stakeholder relationships.
• Maintaining quality of service provision is essential, whilst balancing client needs and environmental regulatory requirements within the confines of contracts.
• People manager experience would be beneficial, as direct management of staff either within projects or a team will be required.
• An appetite and experience in developing new business would also be very much welcome. 

Key competencies and experience

We are looking to appoint an Associate Director who has relevant environmental consultancy experience supporting the UK water sector and possibly beyond. Essential is significant understanding and experience in a relevant water related environmental technical discipline, to include one and ideally more of: hydrology, hydro-ecology and freshwater catchment science related technical disciplines. We also require the following key competencies and experience:

• Excellent understanding of the UK water industry and its regulation.
• Ability to lead projects and large technical elements of work.
• Strong technical direction and delivery skills to ensure a high level of service.
• Experience in leading proposals and winning work.
• Previous people management experience either in project or team settings.
• An aptitude for staff technical development.
• An environmentally related degree (ideally with a post-graduate qualification also).
• A clean full UK driving licence would be preferable. 

Skills and behaviours

• Excellent organisational, communication and presentation skills.
• Collaborative technical leader who has the ability to develop and support others.
• Ability to effectively manage a wide range of resources to deliver and grow our business.
• Excellent multi-stakeholder management skills, including internally and externally.
• Ability to prioritise and manage significant operational demands and pressures.
• Client-facing, opportunistic and comfortable with developing new work.
• Keen to develop and extend segments of our service offering.

Working with Ricardo

You will be warmly welcomed into our workplace where every voice matters. We are diverse thinkers and doers, coming together to create a culture of inclusion. We will support you to find your place.

We will encourage you to use your passion and expertise to make a positive impact through the projects you work on. Your knowledge and desire to bring about change will be invaluable in helping deliver innovative solutions that support communities across the globe in becoming safer and more sustainable.

Work life balance

We offer flexible approaches to work, whether that is working from home, being in the office, or as a hybrid worker. We're happy to discuss flexible working arrangements. Wellbeing is at the core to our culture, allowing employees to flourish and to achieve their full potential.

Benefits

We want you to know how much you are valued. Your remuneration and benefits package will reflect that. You will receive a range of benefits which include support for your physical and mental health.

Our core benefits include 25 days' annual leave, plus 8 flexible bank holidays, a competitive company pension scheme, life assurance and professional subscriptions reimbursement. We also offer a wide range of flexible benefits to suit your lifestyle.

Next steps

Once you have submitted your application a member of our Recruitment Team will be in touch. Please be aware that the timing can vary dependent on the volume of applications that we receive for each role and in some cases, we may start to review applications prior to the closing date.

Ricardo is a Disability confident employer please advise the recruitment team via recruit.ee@ricardo.com if you require any adjustments to support you throughout the recruitment process.

Diversity, Equality and Inclusion statement

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer, we believe in each person's potential, and we'll help you reach yours. We have an ambitious diversity, equality, and inclusion approach as explained here. We value diversity; recognising that a more diverse workforce creates a richer and more varied working environment. Diversity also drives innovation, by allowing us to offer our clients the best consultancy service that we can. As part of our commitment to engage positively and pro-actively with all our employees and to ensure an inclusive culture, we are a recognised as a 'disability confident' employer.

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