Principal Economist
1 week ago
**Job Description** Your new role
Principal Economist
We have some exciting opportunities for 3 Principal Economist vacancies within the Customer, Strategy and Communications Division within National Highways.
If you have significant experience working as an economist and are looking for a role which will give you the challenge of working on diverse and high-profile investment proposals from across an organisation which has one of the highest delegated authoritiesoutside of government ministries, then we would love to hear from you
Current post holders have backgrounds working in consultancy, think tanks, universities, and the government.
What you’ll be leading on
The Principal Economist is responsible for developing standards, advising how to realise Value for Money and coordinating the development and use of National Highway’s analytical platform, acting as a business partner on value for money of projects acrossthe business and managing a team of economists to provide an effective service to the organisation.
- Lead the creation of an analytical and modelling platform for assessing the impacts of National Highway’s activities on the economy, environment and wider society involving specifying what is required of a large number of analytical modules developed byothers across the business, and tracking progress to ensure they are delivered.
- Support the development of capability within National Highways to identify, measure and track the wider economic impact of schemes and programmes, providing expert advice to project teams, ensuring that they understand complex economic modelling and impact
- Lead on assessing the value for money of the third Road Investment Period, as part of its business case, providing a coordinating function for other analytical leads and in so doing ensure National Highway’s analytical platform (once developed) is appliedappropriately.
- Act as an economics Business Partner and provide Value for Money assurance through the Subject Matter Advisor function for all appraisal work that is required to pass through the Investment Decision Committee. This will aid the governance of VfM and helpto ensure National Highways is meeting its licence commitments on delivering and enhancing our VfM capabilities.
- Lead a team of senior and graduate economists; this will include performance management and development. Also, responsible for specifying and periodically reviewing and updating a programme for developing the graduates, to provide them with the breadthof experience they need to become professional economists by the end of the programme. This will help to ensure National Highways has a source of high-calibre Senior and Principal Economists in future years, and a reputation in the wider economics professionfor quality analysis.
- Promote the development and sharing of best practice and robust processes and encourage such approaches to be consistently applied, promoting improvements in National Highway’s economic analysis to encourage best practice and drive consistency
To be successful
- Degree with a significant economics component or master’s in economics
- Significant professional experience of working as an economist
- Experience of working in the public sector in economics or working in infrastructure in either public or private sector is preferred but not essential
- Excellent communication skills, ability to translate the complex economic language for non-experts
A bit about our Economics Team
A bit about our Directorate
Our directorate plays a critical role in National Highways. We set the course for strategic roads, enabling the company to deliver economic and social benefits through meeting the needs of our customers and clients, as well as our regulatory obligations.
We are the focal point within National Highways responsible for providing the corporate strategic planning function for the organisation.
We deliver critical analytical support, provide strategic direction for our customer service imperative, partner with colleagues across the business to devise and deliver communications activities, and we shape, lead and drive the overall transformationof National Highways.
