Forget what the word "utilities" makes you picture. This isn't slow and it isn't dull.

You won't be handed a finished project to babysit to the end. You shape what gets built. You sit with the investment team and decide what's worth doing, scope it, price it, take it to market, then sit across the table from a contractor and hold them to a number. Then you run it through construction, change and final account. Cradle to grave, on a dozen live jobs at once, every one at a different stage and none of them the same.

Why it's worth a look:

• Serious scale behind you. A major regulated network, around 1,500 people, a programme worth hundreds of millions, and funding locked in for years ahead. The work is real and the backing is solid.
• Properly technical, properly varied. Civils, mechanical, electrical, instrumentation and remote telemetry, on assets that run from the size of a shed to the size of a football pitch. Some of it you can monitor and control from a screen. None of it is a spreadsheet job.
• A manager people actually rate. Down to earth, no ego, came up from the bottom himself, and an over-communicator by his own admission. You'll know exactly where you stand, which is the thing most people say was missing where they were before.
• Progression that's earned, not promised. Senior roles get filled from within wherever they can, and the people running the team are living proof it happens. They fund your RICS APC and NEC accreditation to get you there, with someone in house to see you through.

It suits more backgrounds than you'd think

You don't need a utilities background. The one skill that matters here is keeping a lot of plates spinning without dropping any, and plenty of sectors build exactly that. Social housing and planned works. House building across multiple plots. Main contractor and package QS work. Fit-out, term maintenance, civils. If you can read a contract, run several live jobs at once and have a straight conversation when one's needed, where you came from matters far less than how you work.

The contracts run on NEC, mostly Option A and E. JCT in your background helps but isn't essential, and NEC is the easier of the two once you've handled JCT.

The package

Better seen in full than as a headline number: £6.5k car allowance, a 10% bonus, 25 days plus bank holidays, a strong pension, a pay rise pegged to inflation every year, and a flexible benefits pot you can put towards things like dental, health cover or extra holiday. Leeds-based, three days a week with genuine flexibility, plus the odd site visit across the North.

About us, and why a chat costs you nothing

We're clearnorth. Quantity Surveying is the only thing we do, perm and contract, nothing else.

A lot of the best people for this role aren't looking, and that's exactly who it's built for. No application and no interview to begin with, just a quiet ten-minute chat to work out whether it's worth taking further. Your CV goes nowhere until you say so. Your name reaches the client only on your terms. We treat that as the most important part of the job, because for the people we talk to, it is.

If the timing's wrong but the role's landed, reaching out still works. We'd rather already know you for whenever something shifts, six weeks or six years from now.

Reach me on 01946 372 172 or [email protected]. Same conversation, same handling, just a different way in.