Who are we?
Thames Water is the UK’s largest water and wastewater company. We make a daily difference to millions of customers by supplying 2.7 billion litres of world-class water to around 10 million homes. We are an essential service and have operated throughout the Covid19 pandemic.
At Thames Water, every one of our actions, big and small, matters every day. Water is essential to daily life, and that means our business is always open.
What you will be doing
We are seeking for a Water Quality Scientist to join the team on a 12-month secondment/fixed term contract. In this role, you will be part of a dynamic, fast-paced team focused on ensuring Thames Water always protects public health whilst delivering a wholesome water supply. The team oversees several key regulatory deliverables. Working in the Catchment Control section of the Water Quality Risk Team, you’ll undertake a range of activities, including assessing risks to raw water quality, in order to reduce pollution in water, thereby ensuring compliance with drinking water standards in the Thames region.
Key areas of accountability include:
- Understanding how different land-use activities can impact water quality
- Maintaining the catchment and storage reservoir risk assessment elements of the company’s drinking water safety plans
- Working to reduce pollution risks identified in the catchment
- Interpretation and analysis of large water quality datasets and communication of findings to internal and external stakeholders
- Production of internal and external reports
- Contributing to the development of our strategy on catchment management
- Developing positive working relationships with internal and external stakeholders, including our regulators
- Providing technical support such as preparing material for media releases, replying to customer enquiries, and assisting the business during pollution events
- Participation in an out of hours rosta
We’re looking for you to:
- Take ownership and prioritise to balance a varied, and often reactive, workload
- Have excellent communication skills, both written and verbal to clearly interact with a wide variety of internal and external stakeholders
- Provide excellent customer service through an enthusiastic and positive approach, taking accountability for your role while working accurately and flexibly within a busy team
- Be proficient in MS Office and have strong IT skills to deliver reports and monitor water quality performance against external targets
- Have a good appreciation of the regulatory and operational requirements relating to water quality
- Possess the ability to interpret large amounts of data and organise it in a format ready to be audited
- Have an HNC/Degree in an appropriate discipline and/or experience in a scientific field
- Have a full driving licence and access to your own car as some of the work will be field based within the Thames Water catchment area
What’s in it for you?
This is a great opportunity to combine your knowledge of water pollution and how various catchment activities can help improve water quality. This knowledge is essential for ensuring that the quality of Thames Water drinking water is at the level expected by both customers and regulators.
You will be working to ensure that the company maintains robust catchment and storage reservoir risk assessments as part of its drinking water safety plans. This will involve working with other teams in Thames Water and a variety of external stakeholders in order to identify and mitigate catchment risks to water quality.
We’re proud of the positive ways of working we have adopted during the pandemic. We want to create a more flexible and dynamic environment so all our colleagues can thrive. For our office-based roles, we are moving to a hybrid approach where we will provide options around working from our offices, our operational sites and home dependent on role/team/individual. This will be discussed during the assessment process.
Thames Water is a unique, rewarding, and diverse place to work. If you join our team, you’ll enjoy fast-tracked career opportunities, flexible working arrangements and unparalleled benefits. We’re also proud to be an equal opportunity employer, Stonewall Diversity Champion and Disability Confident Leader and we are a Times Top 50 Employer for Women.
You can find out more in our working for us section of our website.