Associate/Associate Director – People Movement (Sports & Events Focus)

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A little more about your role...

Why Are We Hiring?

The People Movement team has undergone rapid growth over the last three years – in part mirroring WSP’s global growth – but also due to the team pro-actively pushing into new areas to unlock this vast potential from our colleagues and clients. As a result, we need to hire again!

The UK’s People Movement team is by far the largest team globally within WSP to offer pedestrian movement analysis services. As such, we are considered a Centre of Excellence and collaborate with colleagues from around the world on Rail, Sports, Aviation, Cultural, High-Rise Buildings, Major Event Planning, Masterplanning and many other sectors, providing a diverse range of challenges and experiences.

Whilst we have a strong pipeline of work to deliver, we are also very much focussed on what’s coming next. WSP has been expanding its footprint within the Sports sector, bringing in new clients and opportunities. In addition, our team has considerable sports and events experience and so we feel we are ready to actively engage with clients in this sector in all aspects of design, operational planning and temporary overlay with regard to crowd movement.

This Associate/Associate Director role can be based from any WSP UK office, with hybrid working allowing for a mix of office and home-working.

About the Role – Technical

Our core work is pedestrian modelling, so a background in modelling techniques would be beneficial in order to engage effectively with both clients and our team. You may have been (or still are) a hands-on modeller or will have strong familiarity with typical outputs from pedestrian modelling software as well as understanding its strengths and weaknesses.

We foresee this role being a blend of active engagement in projects, coupled with long-term business development activities aimed primarily (but not exclusively) at the Sports and Events sector. Therefore, you will have significant experience in this sector and will be able to identify and have in your network key players and stakeholders, including designers, operators and regulators.

As part of your typical day-to-day activities, you will have the chance to interface with other disciplines in order to obtain latest design and operational inputs as well as to inform them of pedestrian modelling and other outputs from our work.

You will be asked to create the technical scope, programme and budget for bids and projects, monitoring financials and technical progress on an ongoing basis, acting as either Project Manager or Discipline Lead according to the project.

About the Role

In addition to delivering project work, this role includes several other elements:

• Business Development
  • networking with WSP colleagues in the UK and overseas
  • contributing to or creating marketing material
  • external clients – reaching out to existing and new contacts via social media, attending conferences or personal introductions in order to expand your and our team’s regular engagement in the Sports and Events sector
  • long-term strategic planning – working with team management to identify longer-term opportunities/goals and developing a path to achieve those ambitions
• Researching new technologies and trends in people movement data capture and analytics.
• Staff coaching/training – we are committed to developing our junior staff capabilities for their career progression and to enhance the team’s offering, as it is a vital part of creating, retaining and growing a strong team for the future.
• This role offers a great degree of flexibility – we are a relatively young (in structure), growing and evolving team with high ambitions for the future, which when combined together provides the ingredients to shape your own role over the next 5-10 years.

What we will be looking for you to demonstrate…

• Pedestrian modelling skills/knowledge – particularly Bentley Legion – but experience in PTV VisWalk, MassMotion or CAST would be particularly advantageous. Complementary (but not essential) software skills could include Pathfinder, VISSIM/VISSUM, S-Paramics, AIMSUM, ArcGIS, Power BI, coding in any language and understanding of 3D CAD software, such as Revit, Rhino, MicroStation and interoperability of IFC models
• Experience of managing pedestrian movement projects to a high standard with an understanding of client/project goals and objectives and how your work and advice has helped to achieve them.

Key Skills and Qualifications

• An undergraduate degree in a numerate, transport or planning-related discipline (such as Ggeography), or equivalent qualification
• Awareness of the application of relevant pedestrian planning guidance (e.g. LUL’s Station Planning guidance, The Green Guide, Network Rail Station Capacity Planning Design Manual) and static capacity assessment techniques (e.g. PCL)
• Accomplished communication skills with experience of presenting ideas to a non-technical audience – through written reports and formal presentations.
• Strong analytical/critical thinker able to interpret numerical results and extract understanding and not afraid to challenge outputs.
• An ability and willingness to develop relationships with people and build a network – both internally and externally.

Don't quite meet all the criteria? Apply, and we can see how your experience aligns to this role and other opportunities within the team.

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