Anglian Water's @one Alliance
Green Skills Academy at the College of West Anglia in Wisbech
Anglian Water supports opening of £4m Green Skills Academy in Wisbech
Wisbech’s new Green Skills Academy at the College of West Anglia has officially opened, made possible by £2 million of overall funding from Anglian Water and its alliance partners, including Balfour Beatty, Barhale, Clancy, Claret, Costain, Danaher & Walsh, Farrans, Jacobs, Kier, Morrison, Mott MacDonald Bentley, MWH Treatment, Public Sewer Services, Skanska and Sweco.
The project also received £2 million of funding from the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority’s Recycled Local Growth Fund, alongside £200,000 from the College of West Anglia.
The £4 million training centre officially opened yesterday, marking a major milestone in efforts to boost green skills and employment opportunities in the town. The Academy provides a vital new hub for local people keen to pursue careers focused on protecting and enhancing the environment.
Based in a new, sustainable building, the Green Skills Academy is powered by solar panels and incorporates rainwater harvesting technology to reduce water use, reflecting the environmental values it promotes.
Once a thriving town, Wisbech has experienced sustained underinvestment since the industrial revolution, with national indices placing the town in the bottom 10% nationally for four of the top eight deprivation indicators.
Often described as the capital of the Fens, Wisbech is home to a quarter of Fenland’s residents. Anglian Water has worked in partnership with Business in the Community (BiTC) since 2013 to help regenerate the town, using a pioneering place-based approach to improve social, economic and environmental prosperity.
This holistic thinking aligns closely with Anglian Water’s purpose, and the Green Skills Academy was previously showcased at BiTC’s Seeing is Believing event as an exemplar of place-based regeneration. In recognition of this work, Anglian Water was named BiTC’s Responsible Business of the Year in 2017.
The Green Skills Academy aims to create a strong pipeline of new talent equipped with highly employable environmental skills. Green skills such as carbon reduction, biodiversity, and conservation will be vital in delivering the infrastructure and environmental work needed to build resilience against the growing impacts of climate change.
This is particularly significant for Anglian Water, which will deliver £11 billion of investment across the East of England between 2025 and 2030. To deliver this programme, the company expects to recruit thousands of new employees, including up to 800 apprentices, many of whom will move into green roles.
Mark Thurston, Chief Executive Officer at Anglian Water, said:
“We’ve invested £2 million, alongside our alliance partners, to support the new Green Skills Academy. Water is critical to enabling economic growth, so the Green Skills Academy is one crucial way that we’re investing in these skills now, to provide a pathway for local people to get involved in really important work that will benefit our region’s environment for years to come.”
Jason Tucker, Director of Commercial Operations at Anglian Water, said:
“It was a pleasure to officially open Wisbech’s new Green Skills Academy alongside the Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Paul Bristow and David Pomfret, CEO and Principal of the College of West Anglia. We’re really proud to have contributed to this exciting new Green Skills Academy, building on years of investment and community engagement in Wisbech. We are committed to supporting local people in Wisbech to boost their green skills and access employment opportunities in the local area.”
The Green Skills Academy welcomed a small cohort of Anglian Water and partner employees earlier this year, before its official opening, for a Green Skills Sustainability Bootcamp, supporting the development of the Academy’s full course offering. A further Bootcamp for Anglian Water and partner employees will be held at the Academy in May.
The Wisbech Academy complements a wider programme of skills and early careers initiatives across the region. Anglian Water’s alliance partners already work with the College of West Anglia through the Collaborative Skills Programme, giving local people access to apprenticeships with partner organisations.
For More Information, contact us at https://anglianwatercareers.co.uk/one-alliance/
Civil Engineer
Apply NowJoin the @one Alliance – a collaborative partnership of eight industry‑leading companies (Anglian Water, Balfour Beatty, Barhale, Binnies, MMB, MWH Treatment, Skanska, and SWECO) delivering over half of Anglian Water’s capital investment programme. As we prepare for the challenges and opportunities of AMP8, we’re looking for talented individuals to help us shape the future of water infrastructure.
At Anglian Water, we’re Always Exploring – ensuring we remain competitive, attractive, and rewarding for both existing and prospective employees. By Doing The Right Thing, we’re committed to recognising and rewarding our people fairly and transparently, while Building Trust through a culture that prioritises health, safety, and wellbeing.
Your Purpose
As a Civil Engineer within one of our four business units, you’ll create and develop value-driven civil designs that achieve our capital investment programme outcomes and deliver value.
Under the direction of the Project Design Manager, you’ll deliver a range of Civil Engineering projects which not only continues to provide the region with safe drinking water, but be involved in pioneering and environmentally- focussed work which enhances our region’s prosperity now and in years to come.
What You’ll Be Doing
- Production of civil designs, calculations and specifications for water-sector assets, design schedule and specify pipes, including ductile iron, steelwork and plastic.
- Working within multi-discipline design teams to produce designs which are on time, within budget and meet the required standards, liaising with stakeholders including Operations, contractors, and suppliers along the way.
- Drive excellence in Health and Safety in design by eliminating hazards and reducing risks during design whilst complying with Alliance CDM procedures.
- Progress projects from feasibility stage through detailed design to construction.
- Undertake site visits to assess current condition of our assets for feasibility studies, reports and provide survey data for integration of the asset into our design solution.
- Provide support to update existing, and increase the number of, Standard Products that are used within our design solutions on a repeatable basis.
- Identify and promote opportunities to meet the project digital, sustainability, innovation and people objectives.
About You
You will ideally have:
- BEng or MEng/MSc Degree in Civil or Structural Engineering, ideally working towards attaining Chartered Engineer status
- Good knowledge and experience of undertaking structural calculations for various concrete structures, and demonstrable experience in undertaking design of various civil engineering structures
- Experience with relevant engineering design software packages
- Confident in the utilisation of British Standards and Eurocodes and have the ability to interpret ground investigation reports to enable you to design the correct solution
- Team work and collaboration skills
- Strong reporting writing and data analysis skills
- Ability to professionally challenge current ways of working and suggests new approaches
Depending on your skills, experience, and interests, you could be aligned to one of our four business units:
Place Based Thinking
The Place Based Thinking team delivers some of the largest and most complex projects across the @one Alliance. Made up of six Senior Project Manager teams, we oversee 19 catchments, covering key sites such as Whitlingham, Flag Fen, Great Billing, Cotton Valley, Bedford, Colchester, and Ipswich Cliff Quays. These projects involve managing all parts of the network from rising and gravity mains, pumping stations, high spilling overflows, and water recycling centres.
Water
The Water Business Unit provides strategic support across the clean water network, covering both system performance and infrastructure planning. We assess the future hydraulic state of the network in response to population growth and increased demand, support the design and delivery of capital and infrastructure schemes to ensure hydraulic resilience, and work with optimisation teams to enhance overall network efficiency.
Water Recycling (East and West)
Our Water Recycling Business Unit, split into East and West regions, is responsible for the collection, conveyance, and treatment of wastewater across an extensive network. We operate over 76,000 km of sewerage infrastructure and 1,163 treatment centres, ensuring safe and sustainable discharge to the environment while driving innovation and environmental performance.
Why Join Us?
This is a fantastic opportunity to work with one of the UK’s most successful capital delivery alliances. You’ll have the chance to contribute to cutting‑edge projects that shape the future of water infrastructure, working alongside a team of experts across various disciplines. We offer a culture that values innovation, continuous learning, and professional growth, with a focus on delivering sustainable solutions that make a positive environmental impact.
At Anglian Water’s @one Alliance, we believe in being Safer Every Day
Safety is at the heart of everything we do. Being Safer Every Day means making positive choices, moment by moment, to protect ourselves and those around us. We create a culture where health, safety and wellbeing come first.
Together, we will be the change