Flushing Operative

Full time – 37 hours

Up to 9 months secondment

Starting Salary £25,300

Location: Durham, Chester le Street, Consett and Stanley areas

About the role

We’ve amazing opportunities to come and join our team of flushing operatives who help clean our water mains throughout the region ensuring our customers receive the best quality drinking water.

As a Flushing Operative your role is crucial, without you our water supply could suffer which could impact our customers. We are looking for you to safely carry out flushing activity whilst providing a first-class service to our customers. You will be responsible for operating valves and hydrants to guarantee our water network remains calm whilst ensuring the water is discharged without risking the environment.

We will provide you with a fully equipped van so you can react when our analysts pick up on an area which requires flushing. You will be

expected to work productively and accurately against set targets. At times you will provide face to face assistance to our customers, managing their expectations in line with our policies, procedures, and operational requirements.

This is both a reactive and proactive role; most of the time you'll support with planned flushing activity, however during extreme weather events we may stop flushing operations and move our resource reactively to support leakage find activity. You will be supported to develop your leak detection skills; you'll carry out sounding of our water network to accurately detect invisible water leaks.

We are focused on keeping the best quality water flowing and minimising waste, so our flushing operatives are out and about, rain or shine, winter, and summer, providing assistance in city centres and rural locations. Water is a 24/7 business, so our team sometimes work evenings and weekends to get the job done and keep our customers happy. Once fully trained you will be expected to take part in a standby rota to support water distribution outside of normal working hours.

Please note when you are called out you are expected to be mobile as soon as possible and within 30 minutes from receipt of a call.

Please note, this role comes with a Transit van and fuel card for business use only. This van will be kept at your home location when not in use.

Prospective employees and agency workers in defined safety and security critical roles will be required to undertake a drug and alcohol test after the job offer has been made. This will be prior to or within four weeks of their start date.

Prospective employees and agency workers who fail a pre-employment urine drug screen will have their sample analysed by the Company appointed laboratory as a matter of course. Failing a pre-employment drugs or alcohol test may lead to the job offer being revoked

About you

We’re looking for you to have proven experience of delivering outstanding customer service, along with being a natural problem solver. Once trained you will be expected to work alone, this requires a high level of self-motivation.

We are looking for hard-working, flexible, technically minded people who would like working outdoors. You will need to be competent with the use of mobile technology (smart phones/tablet etc) and enjoy engaging with customers.

If you like the sound of the job and want to work outdoors, enjoy problem solving, like a challenge, and enjoy keeping customers happy, we will offer all the training and support you need to be successful.

You will need a fill UK driving licence to enable you to do this role and ideally you will live in postcode areas DH1, DH2, DH3, DH8 & DH9 to help with our service delivery.

Here at Northumbrian, Diversity, Inclusion and Equity means bringing your full self to work. We encourage and welcome applications from all underrepresented groups, as we believe and strive for community representation within all our teams, structures and organisation

NWG (Northumbrian Water Group) provides water and sewerage services to 2.7 million people in the North East of England as Northumbrian Water, and water services to 1.5 million people in the South East of England as Essex & Suffolk Water.

We are proud to serve our customers and we're committed to delivering great service, putting our customers at the heart of everything we do.