Principal Consultant Life Cycle Assessment

Overview

Role: Principal Consultant - Life Cycle Assessment

Location: UK Flexible

Salary range: £45,000 - £65,000

Role ID: 2022-1518

Our vision is to create a safe and sustainable world

Ricardo plc is a global strategic, environmental, and engineering consulting company, listed on the London Stock Exchange. With over 100 years of engineering excellence and employing close to 3,000 employees in more than 20 countries, we provide exceptional levels of expertise in delivering leading-edge and innovative cross-sector sustainable products and solutions. Every day, we enable our customers to solve the most complex and dynamic challenges to help achieve a safe and sustainable world.

Energy & Environment, one of Ricardo plc’s five operating business units, is a leader in sustainability consultancy, solving complex environmental challenges through industry-leading analysis, advice and data. With more than 40 years of heritage in addressing air quality, environmental and sustainability issues, our customers value us for our deep understanding and breadth of services covering the entire value chain from evidence, policy & strategy to implementation.

We are currently looking for a Principal Consultant to join our SI&O Management team.

Purpose:

The sustainability team in Ricardo Energy and Environment helps clients to understand and then reduce their environmental and social impacts. A key tool in this process is life cycle assessment (LCA), which examines such impacts across the full life cycle of a product or service. Demand for this type of work is outstripping our team's resources, so we are seeking to recruit an experienced principal consultant, capable of managing and delivering LCA projects, with opportunities to also support our wider sustainability project work.

Key Responsibilities

• Within a collaborative and supportive team of 12 consultants, you will be responsible for helping to win and deliver projects (mainly with clients in the private sector) on product LCA and wider sustainability.
• To assist our team, you will need to be capable of taking over, directing, managing and delivering existing LCA projects, as well as writing proposals for new work.
• We expect you will be experienced in building LCA models, in Microsoft Excel and/or in bespoke software packages such as SimaPro or GaBi and will be able to support and train more junior colleagues in developing LCA models in these platforms.
• We expect you will have detailed understanding of relevant ISO standards. Understanding of other methodologies relating to LCA, such as carbon foot printing, EPDs, PCRs and PEF are also valuable.
• As the project director for some of these jobs, you will need to ensure high quality technical delivery, ensuring models outputs are valid, checking reports conformity to standards such as ISO140444.
• You will guide project managers to control budgets and timings, and allocate tasks to colleagues as required.
• You will need to demonstrate experience of working face-to-face with clients and managing their expectations.

Ricardo operates a parallel 'team leader' system for pastoral staff management, meaning that you will not initially have any direct line management responsibilities. However, if such line management is of interest to you, we can help you to demonstrate and develop that capability in parallel with your project management responsibilities.

Key competencies and experience

• We expect you to have experience of managing and delivering complex LCA projects in accordance with international standards.
• Experience of participation in critical reviews is not a requirement but is preferable.
• Experience of working in the consultancy sector will be valuable, to demonstrate that you have the necessary commercial awareness, but we are also interested to talk to candidates currently performing environmental roles directly within industry.
• We expect you to have completed a higher education qualification (Bachelor's Degree) in an environmental discipline, or otherwise to have a fair track record working in an environmental role, so that you can demonstrate your knowledge.

Skills and behaviours

• You will need to be comfortable and confident in spreadsheet calculations in general and life cycle assessment in particular.
• Similarly, your writing skills must be strong, so that you can communicate clearly and without errors.
• Project management within consultancy is a key skill requirement, so you will need to at least demonstrate your ability to manage and account for your time and oversee others in the project team to deliver work on time and budget.
• enthusiastic, committed, responsible, open and reliable.

This is a fast-paced and challenging environment offering you the opportunity to make your mark. You will have support from the wider business for your career to develop into a wide range of future opportunities within Ricardo Energy & Environment.

In return for your commitment, drive and enthusiasm, we offer an attractive benefits package, a personal development plan, and the opportunity to make a difference in a challenging and rewarding field. Ricardo Energy & Environment is an equal opportunities employer.

Working here

Ricardo is an exciting and rewarding place to work and you have the opportunity to make a difference. You will work with teams of talented, dedicated, and supportive individuals. Alongside having a fantastic opportunity to develop your career with us through our broad range of projects, mentoring opportunities and a personalised approach to your learning and development. We are always keen to hear from people who have driven, ambition and a flair for innovative thinking.

Wellbeing and work life balance

We offer flexible approaches to work, whether that's working from home, being in the office, or as a hybrid worker. We're happy to discuss flexible working arrangements. Wellbeing is at the core to our culture, allowing employees to flourish and to achieve their full potential. Our People are important to us, and we take pride in our wellbeing programmes and policies that support individuals including flexible working, carers policy, mental health first aiders and readily available support through our extensive Employee Assistance programme.

Diversity, Equality and Inclusion statement

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer, we believe in each person's potential, and we'll help you reach yours. We have an ambitious diversity, equality, and inclusion approach as explained here. We value diversity; recognising that a more diverse workforce creates a richer and more varied working environment. Diversity also drives innovation, by allowing us to offer our clients the best consultancy service that we can. As part of our commitment to engage positively and pro-actively with all our employees to ensure an inclusive culture, we are a recognised as a 'disability confident' employer.

Benefits

Our core benefits include 25 days' annual leave, plus 8 flexible bank holidays, a competitive company pension scheme, life assurance and professional subscriptions reimbursement. We also offer a wide range of flexible benefits to suit your lifestyle.

Once you have submitted your application a member of our Recruitment Team will be in touch. Please be aware that the timing can vary dependent on the volume of applications that we receive for each role and in some cases, we may start to review applications prior to the closing date.

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