Principal Consultant (Transport Policy Monitoring & Evaluation)

At WSP you’ll find yourself exploring new opportunities to make the most of your expertise and work with deep technical experts across multiple sectors. You will be enabling clients to deliver evidence based policies to meet their priorities such as to efficiently improve the movement of people and goods, reduce carbon, improve safety, take advantage of digital opportunities and meet customer expectations. 

A little more about your role…

WSP’s Intelligent Infrastructure discipline works across a wide range of clients in transport and beyond. Working in our Operations and Safety team, the successful candidate will work alongside senior experts and collaboratively with other specialists across WSP, matching your monitoring & evaluation skills with technical skills in areas like energy, roads, rail, and active travel to provide a strong and tailored offering for our clients. 

You will work on a wide range of monitoring & evaluation projects at a central and local government level, resulting in a varied and diverse portfolio.

Our clients can have multiple overlapping and sometimes conflicting priorities and rely on us to ensure that their policies and initiatives have robust, credible and usable monitoring and evaluation plans. You will provide our clients with evidence of “what works?” alongside a deep understanding of “why?” to enable the efficient operation and effective evolution of the UK’s transport system.

A typical week would include:

• Delivering a multi-discipline monitoring and evaluation project, ranging from assessing evaluability, to scoping and designing monitoring and evaluation frameworks, delivering evaluations of local and national transport policies, programmes or projects and fostering learning and impactful action on the back of evaluation insights.
• Working with our Clients, to provide expert monitoring and evaluation advice to help them deliver their objectives and optimise benefits. 
• Collaborating with a range of experts from across other specialist WSP teams and our supply chain to ensure that your projects bring in the skills needed to meet the project needs.
• Contributing your expertise to the wider team by providing technical leadership, support or peer review as required.
• Developing your own skills and practice, and contributing to the growth of our Monitoring and Evaluation expertise area to support delivery against its ambitions.

What we will be looking for you to demonstrate

• A proven technical capability in the design and execution of monitoring and evaluation frameworks of policies, programmes and / or projects
• An understanding of impact and process evaluation approaches and an understanding of how this affects design and execution
• An understanding of, and experience in, applying different evaluation methods including quasi-experimental and theory-based evaluation methods
• Experience of applying government guidance on monitoring and evaluation, (e.g. the HM Treasury’s Magenta and Green Books, or Department for Transport’s Transport Appraisal Guidance).
• Strong quantitative and qualitative analytical skills (e.g. statistical, operational research, modelling, economic and/or social research), with experience of delivering robust mixed-method analytical projects and evidence synthesis
• Proven use of data visualisation and reasoning  to translate evidence into clear, actionable insights for clients and stakeholders
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with experience communicating complex evidence and evaluation findings clearly and persuasively through reports, presentations and workshops. You will be able to tailor messages to suit clients, policymakers, technical specialists and senior leaders
• Expertise in building and maintaining effective relationships with clients, technical specialists and commercial partners, fostering collaboration, stakeholder engagement and buy-in to achieve successful project outcomes.
• A passion for evidence-informed decision-making, championing the role for robust evidence and analytical quality.