Graduate Project Planner - Graduate Scheme 2025

The salary for this role is £32,729.

This role requires employees to complete an online Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS), including The Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) checks for criminal convictions.

UKAEA’s two-year graduate scheme is split by 80% of your time developing both your general work-related skills and professional qualifications and 20% of your working time dedicated to graduate training and development.  Within the graduate training and development, there is a core suite of activities designed to develop your professional and business skills. Elements of this programme are flexible and can be tailored to your personal development needs and to those of your specific job role. 

The Role

The role of the Graduate Project Planner is to work with stakeholders to ensure all aspects of the project are defined. The planner provides clarity on key milestones to define what, when and how activities will be organised to ensure the outcomes of a project can be achieved, with the resources available. They lead on all aspects of project planning, which will include the development, updating and monitoring of plans and schedules. They identify tasks, activities, interdependencies and outputs for the project and work with the project team to track and monitor progress against the plan throughout the life of the project.  Planners at this level may be graduate entrants and new to the profession working in a support capacity under the direction of a level 5 or 6 planner. 

Additional Responsibilities:

• Lead on planning activity and work with the project to support delivery of the business case benefits and outcomes. Support capability building and the use of best practice in planning and reporting.  
• Challenge and test project assumptions to ensure that plans are realistic and achievable. Development of breakdown structures, quality criteria, product descriptions and monitoring strategy. Support the project manager to identify options to optimise delivery through resource smoothing, resource levelling and rescheduling of activities. 
• Ensure that stakeholder responsibilities and needs are understood and addressed in reporting arrangements. Develops peer networks across the department. 
• Monitor and analyse planning and scheduling information, reporting progress, slippage and highlighting areas of risk and opportunity. 
• Provide advice on planning processes throughout the lifecycle of the project. 

Essential Requirements:

• For this position we are looking for those that graduated from disciplines such as economics, procurement, finance, and maths. However, those with any degree discipline may apply. 
• Proficient in use of MS Office Suite eg. MS Excel, MS Word 
• An approachable person with excellent inter-personal skills able to interact with a range of people across the project 

A full list of our benefits can be found here https://careers.ukaea.uk/life-at-ukaea/employee-benefits/

We welcome applications from under-represented groups, particularly individuals from black and other ethnic minority backgrounds, people with disabilities, and women. Our Executive team, supported by our 'Equality, Diversity and Inclusion' (EDI) Partner and Inclusion Ambassadors, actively promotes EDI and takes steps to increase diversity within our organization. We reinforce best practices in recruitment and selection and evaluate approaches to remove barriers to success.

Please note that vacancies are generally advertised for 4 weeks but may close earlier if we receive a large number of applications.