Who are we?
Thames Water is the UK’s largest water and wastewater company. We make a daily difference to our 15 million customers by supplying 2.6 billion litres of water through 32,000 km’s of pipes, to keep taps flowing and toilets flushing. 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
This role for is primarily to lead the financial appraisal and governance activities for Programmes within the Operations portfolio. The role holder will need to create, maintain and govern the economic case for transformation (i.e. an overall business case), as well as support and influence component scope within programmes – to drive best value from the programmes and to support Executive decision making.
This is a leadership role which serves as the ‘financial conscience’ for the Transformation programmes through high support and high challenge. It will require a mix of analytical and stakeholder management skills – alongside sound logic, governance mindset and commercial acumen. The successful candidate will work closely with stakeholders across Ops and Finance to ensure there is a robust business case behind all proposed changes, the benefits are underwritten by robust delivery plans – and that position and potential complex considerations can be presented at a consolidated level for seniors in a clear, precise manner.
In this role you will be expected to:
- Prepare and maintain/iterate the business case proposals to support the articulation of programme benefits. Be the benefits management subject matter expert for business benefits cases, drivers of cost and value
- Create a benefits realisation plan (BRP) and support programme leads in developing the benefits measurement framework (BMF)
- Work across Transformation activities impacting Water and manage consolidated Transformation financial messaging for Ops
- Exhibit Best practice leadership
- Drive Finance change
We are looking for you to bring the following skills and experience:
- Degree level education or equivalent experience
- Relevant professional qualifications – recognised accounting qualification expected
- Finance manager, business partner or management consulting experience
- Financial modelling experience
- Experience with business cases, cost-benefit proposals, investment appraisals or benefits tracking
- Experience working on a project (transformation, CI, cost reduction or other)
- Highly analytical with strong attention to detail. Comfortable working with numbers
- Ability to understand complex ideas and data (financial and non-financial) to generate insight and articulate key findings and recommendations. FP&A experience/skills highly beneficial.
- Leadership skills and ability to champion the financial agenda amongst a diverse range of stakeholders
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, tailored to the stakeholder audience
- Desire to build relationships and work collaboratively across a diverse set of stakeholders to achieve a common goal
- A self-starter who takes ownership for seeing a deliverable through to completion. Effective at identifying issues early and escalating these appropriately
- Prioritises effectively in a pressured, uncertain environment to deliver stable, quality performance
What’s in it for you?
This is a rare opportunity to make a real difference to a business and cultural transformation. You will be a leader in a programme that is fundamental to the success of Thames Water and one of our key business priorities for the next AMP.
This is an exciting and challenging time for our business as a whole and the water industry. A backdrop of climate change and population growth is putting pressure on our existing water resources and in turn driving the need for a series of significant investments in our assets. The projects we will develop and deliver in the next 5 to 15 years, will leave a legacy for future generations across London, the Southeast, and the UK.
Our competitive salary package includes a bonus, car allowance, healthcare, an excellent contributory pension, 26 days holiday per year increasing to 30 with the length of service and a wider benefits scheme.
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.