Costing Specialist

About the Role

Scottish Water’s Outturn and Quality Assurance team are part of the Cost Intelligence Team working within Capital Investment delivering our vast programme of improvements across Scotland. We are recruiting for a Costing Specialist to join our thriving team.

Quality Assurance’s mission involves governing and maintaining Scottish Water’s cost and carbon data and ensuring the integrity of data input into our business systems, in particular our costing system, BES (Benchmark Estimating Software). You will work within a collaborative environment, engaging with internal and external stakeholders to drive the importance of cost data accuracy and efficiency. Your contributions will directly support Scottish Water’s strategic ambitions, including its carbon commitment to achieve net-zero emissions by 2040.

What you’ll do

In this role, you’ll be a key player in our Quality Assurance team, where your focus will be on making sense of, evaluating, and ensuring the accuracy of project cost data before it’s put to use. You’ll collaborate across various parts of Scottish Water and with our Delivery Partners to ensure data integrity and deliver reliable outcomes.

In a nutshell, you’ll be responsible for reviewing and verifying the actual costs provided by our Capital Investment Delivery Partners, making sure they’re correctly allocated within our corporate estimating system at project closure. You will become very familiar with our Cost Data Rules, ensuring projects are built up correctly within our cost estimating software and accurately represent the actual scope of work completed on site with the appropriate cost and carbon breakdown and allocation.

You’ll carry out validation checks and audits to ensure the data’s spot-on and can help us make informed decisions about strategic and corporate investments through reporting and communication. This is key to providing robust data to the wider business to enable effective informed decision making. You’ll provide effective feedback to support continuous improvement, assisting in training and guidance solutions as required.

What you’ll need

To succeed in this role, you should ideally bring a background or relevant experience in estimating, a strong commercial awareness, and a solid understanding of capital programme delivery. High attention to detail is essential, as the role involves managing, interpreting, and understanding both drawings and financial reports, as well as handling large volumes of complex data.

Experience with Benchmark Estimating Software, Power BI, and advanced Excel skills would be particularly beneficial, as would effective presentation capabilities. Strong numerical, analytical, and written communication skills are required, alongside the confidence to deliver constructive feedback positively and communicate naturally with others. Finally, a continuous improvement mindset and the ability to liaise effectively with internal and external stakeholders will contribute greatly to your success in this position.

Looking out for you 

While the work we do is important, we know it’s not the only thing that matters. That’s why we make sure you have everything you need to find a good work-life balance. 

You’ll get plenty of time to recharge with 38 days of holiday every year (including public holidays). And you can even buy up to five more if you need a little extra time. You can also take time off to volunteer in your community. 

When it comes to major life events we have family-friendly policies around adoption, maternity, and parental leave. And for the everyday? We embrace flexible working. 

For your future, there’s our pension (the ‘know-what-you’ll-get-when-you-retire’ kind), and life assurance. 

As for some nice extras? You can expect an annual company bonus. Not to mention access to SW Splash – handy rewards that can save you money on holidays, bills, and shopping. 

The not-so-small print 

This role will be a Grade 6. If you’re new to Scottish Water, you’ll join us on a starting salary of £37,815. Performance-driven pay progression would then allow you to move through the range to a maximum of £48,395. 

If you’re interested in this role – or know someone else who might be - we’ll be accepting applications until midnight on 28th May 2026.

We operate Balanced Hybrid working at Scottish Water and we encourage people to work half their time in a Scottish Water location. 

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.

Please note, Scottish Water takes the safety, health and wellbeing of our employees, colleagues and customers very seriously and as such you may be subject to Drug & Alcohol testing in line with our policy.

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.