Principal Consultant - Local Authority Climate Action

Overview

Role: Principal Consultant - Local Authority Climate Action

Location: Manchester UK, London, Harwell ( Oxfordshire), Glasgow, Bristol, Home based, Flexible, Hybrid remote/In office, Remote work allowed

Role ID: 2023-2002

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.

Working here

You will be warmly welcomed into our workplace where every voice matters. We are diverse thinkers and doers, coming together to create a culture of inclusion. We will support you to find your place.

We will encourage you to use your passion and expertise to make a positive impact through the projects you work on.  Your knowledge and desire to bring about change will be invaluable in helping deliver innovative solutions that support communities across the globe in becoming safer and more sustainable.

Work life balance

We offer flexible approaches to work, whether that is 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.

Role purpose

We are currently looking for a Principal Consultant to join our climate team.

You will play a key role in our expanding team offering support to local authorities, predominatly in the UK, with climate action planning. The work will involve project delivery and management, and business development. The primary focus of the role will be to contribute to and lead projects, mostly for local authority clients, on understanding current greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, modelling future emissions scenarios to net zero and developing climate action plans. There will also be opportunities to support climate action plannning with public sector clients outside of the UK, including cities and national governments.

Key responsibilities

• Developing GHG baselines for local authority areas using data from a range of national, regional and local sources.
• Using Ricardo’s internal net zero modelling tool to develop emissions pathways that illustrate how local authorities could achieve net zero across their areas and contributing to the ongoing development of Ricardo’s approach to net zero modelling.
• Developing clear, robust and accessible climate action plans for local authorities.
• Presenting project outputs to local authorities and to local stakeholders in a clear and accessible way.
• Helping local authorities understand how they can track progress towards their net zero targets.
• Supporting local authorities to embed net zero considerations in wider work, to align their development plans and spatial strategies with net zero.
• Helping local authorities understand links between net zero and other areas, including climate resilience, air quality, biodiversity net gain, and supporting cross-selling of Ricardo’s expertise in these areas.
• Helping embed net zero thinking across work being delivered for clients in other teams across Ricardo.
• Come up with ways to communicate highly technical/scientific information to different audiences and to get them onboard with big changes.

Key competencies and experience

• Educated to at least degree level, or equivalent qualification, in a numerate/scientific subject.
• Experience of working on climate action planning, ideally related to capacity building, system design, or policy/action development, at city/sub-national and/or national level.
• Experience and knowledge of the climate change policy landscape in the UK, at national, regional and local levels.
• Experience and knowledge of methods for the estimation of GHG emissions and reductions.
• Experience of working in or for local authorities and an understanding of how they work
• Experience of managing projects.
• Strong PC literacy – especially in MS Excel, Word and PowerPoint.

Skills and behaviours

• Effective communication skills, both written and oral, including excellent presentation skills.
• Excellent organisation and time management skills.
• Accuracy and attention to detail.
• Strong analytical skills and ability to work with excel-based tools and models.
• Flexibility, resilience and enthusiasm, and a positive attitude to new challenges.
• Strong problem solving and creative thinking skills.
• Able to work independently and demonstrate initiative, as well as contribute effectively as part of a cross-disciplinary team.
• Be Sensitive to the challenges, disadvantages and potential inequalities in the transition to net zero.

Desirable:

• Experience working in a consultancy environment.
• An understanding of planning policy and local authorities’ development plans and spatial strategies, for example a background in planning, sustainable building design/engineering, experience in doing Sustainability Appraisals / Strategic Environmental Assessments, writing evidence documents or Supplementary Planning Documents etc.
• Higher degree in a numerate/scientific subject.
• Experience in stakeholder engagement.
• Bid writing experience.
• Experience in designing and conducting training.
• To think creatively as well as analytically.
• Be willing to challenge the traditional way of doing things (whether that’s planning policy, asset management, investment etc).

Benefits

We want you to know how much you are valued. Your remuneration and benefits package will reflect that. You will receive a range of benefits which include support for your physical and mental health.

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.

Next steps

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.

Ricardo is a Disability confident employer please advise the recruitment team via recruit.ee@ricardo.com if you require any adjustments to support you throughout the recruitment process.