Why Water?

Without water, life as we know it would be impossible. Every day, we rely on it for drinking, washing and cleaning. It helps create the energy we need for heat and light. It’s also essential to the products we enjoy and the natural world we depend upon.

Yet the South East faces a future of more people and less water. Our population is growing fast, and climate change is bringing greater risk of both drought and flooding.

In the water industry, your work will help to address these challenges and give people access to sustainable, high-quality water and wastewater services for decades to come.

The South East is also home to over 700 miles of coastline, two National Parks, four Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and some of the world’s rarest chalk streams. As well as working within these breath-taking environments, your activities will help preserve them for generations to come.

Why Southern Water?

Each day, over four million people across Sussex, Kent, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight count on us for their essential water or wastewater services. Our work is vital, because we’re providing water for life.

Do you want to make a difference? At Southern Water, you work will help to enhance health and wellbeing, protect and improve the environment and sustain the economy. You’ll also play an important role in helping us deliver a resilient water future for the South East.

Are you a natural collaborator with a strong moral compass and high standards? If so, you’ll fit right in. Everything we do is underpinned by three values: succeeding together, doing the right thing and always improving.

Do you want to bring your authentic self to work every day? We do too. That’s why we’re building an inclusive culture and are proud to offer equal opportunities regardless of age, cultural background, disability, gender, marital status, nationality, political belief, race, religion or sexual orientation. We believe the unique perspectives and experiences each of us brings make us stronger.

What you’ll bring to the role:

You will proactively engage with the developer industry across all work streams as the house building sector returns to pre COVID levels of output. You will support us in maintaining our regulatory requirements and deliver an important role in getting new developments connected to our infrastructure so they can receive water and sewer supply services.

You will assist developers throughout their application and consultation processes, acting with and for them as appropriate. You will support in adoptions, connections, diversions, and building over public sewers applications to deliver for our customer needs whilst complying with Southern Water and Water Industry & Planning policies.

Your engineering capabilities will come into play when vetting designs and managing submissions, ensuring all applications are complete to required standards and in assessing the impact of a new development on the water infrastructure. There will be a strong customer facing element requiring proactive engagement at all stages.

You’ll use your technical engineering capability to help guide customers who include housing developers, builders and self-lay providers to find the right solution for their water & sewer supply needs. You’ll be able to set goals and problem solve complex issues brought to your attention by our customers, colleagues, suppliers or contractors.

You must have technical knowledge and preferably some engineering background, either by qualification or experience. You will also be educated to HNC/D or Degree level in Civil Engineering or a water based subject with customer / external stakeholder facing experience. This role is ideal for individuals finding a foot hold in the Civil Engineering space following undergraduate or postgraduate training.

You will have knowledge of the Water Industry Act 1991, Sewers for Adoption and an understanding of the regulators expectations. Risk identification and management are important elements of the role. You will also benefit from knowledge of the Town and Country Planning process would.

We need you to:

• Be enthusiastic in supporting customers.
• Be flexible approach to problems.
• Deliver excellent customer service.
• Keep good records and competently manage databases.
• Analyse situations and find proactive solutions.  
• Have a key focus on performance and delivery
• Deliver against tight targets and timescales
• Communicate efficiently to enable clear concise liaison across multiple interfaces
• Be a leader whilst building relationships in complex, dynamic environments.