Cost Intelligence Manager (Flexibly located within Scotland)

Together we are Trusted to Serve Scotland.

We are looking for a Business Manager within Commercial to lead our costing and estimating teams. This is a key leadership role within the Commercial management team and will report to the Head of Commercial.

What You’ll Do

You will lead the costing and estimating teams and ensure that they work collaboratively with internal and external partners to ensure the efficient and effective delivery of a diverse programme of work across EPA, CSD and Capital Investment.  You will be a key influencer and ensure continuous improvement within Commercial, contributing to Scottish Water successfully achieving its Strategic Ambitions with a focus on value for money and net zero.

You will also be responsible for all aspects of end-to-end costing and estimating including leading and supporting business planning and SIDM costing workstream and ownership of Benchmark Estimating System and all estimating and cost capture requirements including benchmarking to support the delivery of the Capital Programme. Building strong relationships with peers in SW and partners, as well as always seeking sustainable and successful outcomes for all parties.

Key Accountabilities/Tasks

As part of your role, you will develop, lead, and implement the costing and estimating strategy including the processes, organisation, technology, and information to deliver a best-in-class service for the Scottish Water Group. You will work both internally and externally to create effective collaborative working relationships and an environment of trust and create a forward looking and learning environment that ensures development of the capabilities and capacities required to support SIDM and efficient delivery of the capital programme.

Additionally, you will work with all parts of Scottish Water and its Partners to create a continuous improvement environment, ensuring that knowledge and learning is shared across Commercial, Scottish Water and its supply chain. You will build strong collaborative partnerships with peers in SW and Partners, key customers, and stakeholders and provide an end-to-end costing and estimating service to support the Investment Programme Prioritisation Framework utilising appropriate costing methodologies for the interventions at each gateway whilst accountable for capital cost governance. Lastly, you will determine and own the costing data model including the rules on cost data capture and unit cost establishment.

What You’ll Bring

People: You enjoy mentoring and coaching colleagues and communicate messages by a variety of techniques including presentations. You engage in collaborative working, and you are a confident facilitator who can influence a wide variety of stakeholders and be seen as a trusted and respected role model.

Results: You are driven to achieve outcomes on time and budget to desired quality, recognise and own the benefits of good costing and estimating practices, and you possess an enthusiasm and motivation to deliver in a challenging environment.

Change: You are able to recognise the positives in change and communicate the opportunities to others, help shape change and have leadership and skills to embed change.

Self-Awareness: You regularly seek feedback and uses learning to improve personal and team performance.  Makes best use of strengths of others to support areas of personal weakness.

You have a strong knowledge of the Scottish Water Business, its Business Planning process, and a solid understanding of the regulatory framework. You have a proven track record of innovative leadership achieved by guiding, empowering, and motivating people and your familiarity extends to the NEC suite of contracts and its underlying principles.

Your negotiating skills are strong, accompanied by a good sense of commercial acumen. You have experience leading teams through change and engaging in various organisational and functional initiatives. Additionally, you have proven experience of partnership working and the ability to build sustainable relationships and you've successfully contributed to business change projects, utilising a range of tools and techniques. Your stakeholder management skills are strong, and you have a proven ability to influence outcomes. Lastly, your previous management experience includes working within a costing and estimating environment and you also have experience in budget management and business planning.

The not-so-small print  

The location for this role can be flexible within Scotland.

This role will be at M1 Level. The salary for this role starts from £64,680 with opportunities for further review based on performance.

As well as your salary & bonus you will also be entitled to a generous monthly car allowance.

Your holiday entitlement will be 38 days pa. 

Pension and Life Assurance: You will be automatically enrolled into the Local Government Pension Scheme – a career average scheme and life assurance.

If you’re interested in this role – or know someone else who might be - we’ll be accepting applications until midnight Monday 12th May 2025. 

To apply, please submit a current CV along with a role-specific covering letter of no more than 500 words, outlining your reasons for applying and why you believe you are suitable for the position.

Job offers at Scottish Water are conditional, and will be confirmed on completion of our pre-employment screening, e.g. referencing, criminal record checks, license checks, etc. Screening is conducted on our behalf by a third party and must be completed before your start date. Don’t worry - we’ll only start these checks once you’ve accepted an offer. 

A few final things worth knowing…

Research shows that some people avoid applying for jobs unless they can meet every single criteria. If you’re interested in this job, but don’t tick all the boxes, apply anyway! We hardly ever hire people who can do every part of a job from Day One. Everyone has a learning curve. So don’t rule yourself out!

Let us know if there are any changes we can make to our recruitment process to help you perform at your best. Lots of our people have disabilities or neurodiverse conditions (including some of our recruiters!). We're also aware that some people might be experiencing temporary challenges because of life events, like menopause. We’re very used to making adjustments, so please don’t be afraid to ask.

As part of our commitment to developing a flourishing Scotland, it’s important that all our employees are Scottish taxpayers. If you join us, your home address will need to be in Scotland. If you don’t already live here, you'll need to commit to moving here within your first three months.

Finally (finally!), candidates who haven’t submitted an application in the last 12 months will have their records removed from our recruitment database. You won’t need to do anything. Your data will be automatically deleted. 

We’re here to help. Ask us anything at [email protected]