Cost Controller

An interesting opportunity to be part of a growing function supporting the Water Networks contract management team at a pivotal moment as we are entering into our next investment phase, AMP 8! Committed to administer, monitor and report up to £24M of our annual Water Network Expenditure, to ensure the planned progression of both current and previous years budgets and to resolve enquiries and data requirements from management across the company. Are you passionate to make a difference bringing your commercial skill set to make the most of this opportunity? Read further! As a cost controller, you will be managing supplier performance against contractual obligations within our operational teams working closely with external contractors as well as engaging with internal stakeholders within our sites. You will be co-ordinating between Opex and Capital elements of business to enable Operational Expenditure of approximately £1,000,000 to proceed under Capital funding. You will be responsible for establishing relevant governance and development and maintenance of budget, accruals, cash flows and expenditures within the repair and maintenance contracts for Southern Water. You will configure and produce reports for regular financial reviews and present progress reports at Governance Meetings for conveyance to Head of Function, thereby maintaining the business confidence in the programme's progression to achieve our regulator, OFWAT's mandatory targets. With your analytical skills, you will be interrogating Southern Water's corporate financial system to assemble accurate assessments of financial progress to provide up to date costing reports to enable accurate submissions. You will be setting up specific cost centre codes for our operational teams to monitor leakage activities on the company financial systems and sharing conveyance of data from approved ASB submission to specific operational teams and controlling cost codes to enable collation of data on both performance and financial criteria. Your key accountabilities would also include :

• Pro-actively identifying charges miscoded within function and to outside functions and schemes and ensure their redirection to correct budget.
• Ensure data quality is of a good standard in the Database and financial systems and best practise is employed in all accounting work
• Source, review, analyse and provide relevant financial information to managers
• Support and review the annual budget process and revised forecasts throughout the year.
Your commercial contract management knowledge with clear direction and authorisation limits understanding governance constraints to ensure all work is completed within this framework is critical for this role. With your confidence in influencing and being assertive on decision making in justifying every spend on the programme, you will be managing challenging conversations with external service providers to achieve the intended benefit in controlling our expenditures. Thorough understanding of financial budgets, procedures, forecasting and reporting pertinent to the role

To be successful, it is essential for you to have strong experience of working within contracts management with an exposure to have created, monitored and controlled governance process relating to cost management. Background in clean water operations will be ideal however we welcome applicants with sound knowledge of applying commercial expertise to get the agreed value contractually with our service providers. Previous experience working within a project or Water operations environment will be highly desirable. Qualified to HND level, Degree or HND in suitable engineering subject will be beneficial although not essential.