About Urban Utilities
Urban Utilities (UU) is one of the largest water distributor-retailers in Australia. UU employ more than 1,100 people and supply drinking water, recycled water and sewerage services across Brisbane, Ipswich, Lockyer Valley, Scenic Rim and Somerset.
Over the next ten years, UU is investing $3.8 billion in infrastructure to support water, wastewater and recycled water across our entire region.
It's an exciting time to join the Urban Utilities team and make a lasting impact across customer, community and people. They're passionate about building a culture where their people feel empowered to make a difference and are curious and excited about the work they do and where they are heading.
To deliver the outcomes from their 10-year strategic plan, a new role for a Leader Cost Estimation within their growing Integrated Solutions Group has been created.
The Integrated Solutions Group contributes to Urban Utilities' purpose and vision and enhances the liveability of their communities through safeguarding financial and economic sustainability of the business, planning to meet the needs of their customers and management of the long-term water cycle and our environmental responsibilities.
Reporting to the Manager Cost Intelligence, the Leader Cost Estimation is responsible for the development and continual improvement of Urban Utilities infrastructure cost estimation processes that takes into consideration cost data, analytics, market intelligence and estimating knowledge that ensures the optimisation of infrastructure investments decisions within the regulatory, auditing and assurance requirements.
The role leads a diverse professional team comprising Urban Utilities' employees, specialised contractors and a professional community of practice across major contract partners to provide confidence of planned investment costs and demonstrable efficiency of Urban Utilities' infrastructure investments, from the preparation of integrated plans and strategic business cases, through final client-side budgets for investment approval.
About the Role
Work collaboratively with the leadership team and stakeholders to oversee the team's production of and approval of cost estimates, ensuring that all activities, take off quantities, construction methodology, schedule, resourcing and material sources of risk are identified from (at times) mínimal input information;
Lead the delivery of cost intelligence services which provides complex analyses of the investment costs to identify variances, suggest efficiencies, and increase profitability;
Develop and deliver the cost estimation function processes, information and advice standards and interaction with planning and delivery methodologies to provide accurate, high integrity, timely cost intelligence services;
Responsible for the framework and processes associated to the collection and analysis of the key cost drivers, market dynamics and issues, areas of innovation, and alternative suppliers for business-critical risk areas;
ensuring that all activities, take off quantities, construction methodology, schedule, resourcing and material sources of risk are identified from (at times) mínimal input information;
Develop a deep understanding Integrated Solutions' major contracts for integrated planning, engineering services, solutions development and delivery to effectively estimate proposed costs and recommend optimisations, risk provisions and owners' contingency for investments;
Analyse, assess, and quantify the risks associated with proposed investments and relevant markets to determine appropriate risk provisions and contingency for investments and recommend approaches to mitigate risks;
Use data from a wide range of sources to analyse key themes and identify possible impacts on the business;
Translate business objectives into clearly defined work scopes, costs, and schedules to support growth in the business; and
Communicate the actions needed to implement Cost Intelligence's mission, business plan, professional standards and technical standards within the team, to key customers and across the partner ecosystem.
About You
Tertiary qualification in Construction Management/Engineering or other relevant discipline, and/or equivalent industry experience;
First principles estimating experience with minimum 5 years' experience in capital cost estimating;
Experience leading estimating teams and multiple workflows;
High to advanced skills in excel, databases and Power BI;
Extensive experience in developing project design / scope from mínimal information (an Engineering style skill), determining the "take off" quantities (an Engineering style skill), determining a construction methodology (a construction manager type skill) and planning out the project to determine the schedule/labour/services; and
The Benefits
UU strives to enrich your life both at home and at work by providing world class benefits through their leave provisions, WFH flexibility, personal de