Water Supply Production Flexible Operator

Full time – 37 Hours per week

Salary – up to £29,319 (depending on experience)

Shift working allowance

Location – Lumley WTW (Chester Le Street) & Mosswood (Consett)

About the role

We have a great opportunity to join our Water Supply team here at Northumbrian Water, as a Water Supply Production Operator, ensuring we deliver great high-quality drinking water for our customers.

There’s so much more to the production of great quality drinking water than meets the eye and this key role here at Northumbrian Water is at the front of leading our customer satisfaction of the product. There are so many steps in the process of taking raw water from rivers and reservoirs to then treating it and distributing it to our customers.

Our Flexible Operators work in a team that provide continuous shift cover to ensure the water treatment works always operate. This is achieved by working an 8-hour shift pattern covering day, night and weekend working. The role requires frequent lone working, monitoring water quality at multiple stages of the treatment process to maintain compliance. You’ll also be working with chemicals in the role to ensure we are disinfecting the water effectively to make sure it leaves the site at the right quality.

You’ll be outside a lot of the time wearing Personal Protective Equipment working your way around the site and will be responsible for process unit cleaning, along with emptying and jetting process unit tanks to remove waste material, so it can get messy at times too.

We are looking for you to operate the treatment process, you’ll be using the site SCADA electronic system to operate and monitor the process along with responding to alarms and alerts. You’ll adjust water production volumes to meet customer water demand while complying with quality parameters. Working with chemicals and validating and calibrating instruments will be key to your role in effectively operating the treatment process. You’ll be using laboratory testing and recording results for regulatory auditing and to support decision making in operating the site.

Who knew there was so much to making our amazing water that comes out of your tap!

This role has also been defined as a safety or security critical role and as a condition of a formal offer of employment you’ll be required to undergo a drug and alcohol test.

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 good communication skills, a positive can-do attitude with the ability to take ownership of tasks through to completion. You will have some experience of working in a practical role as the job is hands on operating physical Assets and processes.

Experience of operating a treatment Works, plumbing and electrical or mechanical backgrounds, and working with chemicals would be advantageous but not essential as training will be provided.

You’ll have experience of using various equipment and processes to ensure you follow procedures and have health and safety at the forefront of everything you do. You’ll have experience of using handheld instruments and SCADA system and be able to demonstrate your ability to use the data to be successful in your role.

We’ve mentioned the role is outdoors, so you will need to be comfortable with working outside in all weathers day and night, along with being happy and confident to work alone too. This isn’t for everyone.

Here at Northumbrian Water, 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

Please note that depending on the number of applications received we may close this vacancy early.

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.