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 of pipes, keeping taps flowing and toilets flushing.
At Thames Water, every one of our actions, big and small, matters every day. Water is essential to life, so our business is always open – and this matters even more through a pandemic.
We’re proud of the positive ways of working we’ve adopted during the pandemic, creating a more flexible and dynamic environment so all our colleagues can thrive. We’re moving to a hybrid approach for our office-based roles with various options for working from home, office, and our sites. We’ll cover this during the assessment process.
What you will be doing
This is an exciting opportunity to work in a busy operational environment, within a high-profile team where contacts are made with multiple stakeholders across the business. The System Optimisation Engineer is responsible for a geographical & hydraulic system area of the Thames Water potable water system, typically serving hundreds of thousands of properties, and is tasked to use their technical expertise in hydraulic system operations towards achieving key operational and regulatory targets. This is vital for Thames Water to maintain and improve its status at a time when the business gears up for challenges from a Customer Service and Leakage perspective. Through the course of the role, the candidate will work towards the reliable operation of assets and the hydraulic system, water quality, leakage management, giving operational input into Engineering projects, risk assessing activities on the Network and Production sites, drafting safe method statements and the management of unplanned events.
- Monitor, investigate and resolve low-pressure issues, complaints, and escalations as highlighted either directly by the customer or by alarming Critical Pressure Points, understanding areas and developing solutions to individual problems or emerging risks
- Monitoring the District Metered Area (DMA) and District Meter (DM) availability for emerging issues and supporting the technical resolution of the maintenance workstream
- Leading the technical operational input into engineering and customer-led projects
- Be the technical system operations lead on unplanned emergency events to mitigate against adverse effects to the customer, Interruptions to supply, water quality, brand image
- Write and assess risk assessments for the work impacting the clean water hydraulic system, for example, the repair of leaks, the operation of assets on the network, production site outages, and various other workstreams
- Support monitoring of pressure managed areas and management of information
- Ensure all activities follow Thames Water Asset Management Procedures and that the Risk Assessment process is properly implemented and monitored in a timely fashion
- Assist with analysis of long term issues such as excessive headloss, low flows, area integrity, supply resilience, and water quality turnovers
- Formulating operating strategies in conjunction with the water control centre and highlighting instances of non-compliance, balancing the drivers of leakage reduction and customer pressures, while maintaining a calm operation of the system
- Evaluate and analyse operational information, understanding data integrity difficulties, to resolve basic problems. Design and update line schematics of water pressure zones and the hydraulic systems, to help management and investigation issues
- Assess and approve all new connection or development requests coming from the customer.
- Carry out the Out of hours coordinator responsibilities on a technical standby roster.
We are looking for you to
- Be degree educated graduate in a suitable technical discipline like Engineering, industry experience, and in-depth knowledge of hydraulic principles
- Have a thorough understanding of the water industry regulatory measures relating to customer satisfaction, leakage, water quality, customer low pressures, and interruptions. You will be able to demonstrate this when risk assessing activities are being carried out on a hydraulic system level
- Have strong communication and leadership skills required when negotiating or liaising with different stakeholders in this role
- Have good analytical, problem solving, negotiating skills and extreme willingness to learn and work hard to drive their career within Thames Water
- Full driving licence and own transport are desirable, due to required attendance at meetings spread across various Thames Water offices
What’s in it for you?
Our competitive salary package includes an excellent contributory pension, 26 days holiday per year increasing to 30 with the length of service, and a wider benefits scheme.
Thames Water is a dynamic, rewarding, and diverse place to work, with opportunities around every corner. You’ll enjoy a fulfilling career, flexible working arrangements , and great benefits if you join our team. We’re also proud to be an equal opportunity employer, Stonewall Diversity Champion, and Disability Confident Leader and we’re a Times Top 50 Employer for Women.
We deliver life's essential service so our customers, communities, and the environment can thrive. This means, that when a crisis happens, we all rally around to support our customers. As part of your role, you’ll be asked to help out our Instant Support Team to help our customers in their hour of need. This is incredibly rewarding, and you’ll be given full training – it’s also a great opportunity to learn more about our business and meet colleagues.
Disclaimer: due to the high volume of applications we receive, we may close a vacancy earlier than the advertised date. This is so we can manage all the applications properly and give candidates a positive experience. Once closed, we can’t consider any further applications, so please submit your application as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.
Find out more about working at Thames Water.