Group Risk Manager

London, England, United Kingdom

8/6/2025

Job Description

Costain's Risk and Assurance team are recruiting for a Group Risk Manager. The successful candidate will lead development and maintenance of Group and Principal Risks, support executive board risk owners in defining risks, build and track effective mitigation plans, assess controls and report on progress and approach to the PLC board. The role is responsible for maintaining risk management procedures, tools and templates ensuring these reflect framework changes and address feedback. In addition to the above the candidate will manage configuration, access, user support and licencing for risk management tools (ERM and QRA), including delivery of systems-related training.

Key Responsibilities

• Facilitate the management of Group, Principal and function-owned risks, supporting exec risk owners and assigned risk deputies in risk development, review, update and reporting
• Produce clear and concise reports for the Exec Risk & Assurance meeting, Audit & Risk Committee and PLC board on Group & Principal risks, including impact / likelihood assessment, control effectiveness, risk changes (including external factors), mitigation progress and overall control effectiveness status
• Manage the annual deep dive schedule, supporting risk owners and deputies in the development of briefing material which address key areas of interest from the PLC board and are consistent and integrated with group strategy and wider business plans
• Conduct horizon scanning to identify potential emerging risks, ensuring these are developed in a manner consistent with business context
• Configure, manage and administer risk management applications setup, user access and licence provision, with input from Divisional risk teams where required. Support users across the business in setting up registers, managing access and resolving issues. Manage contracts with software providers ensuring support meets business requirements.
• Maintain (and update where required) risk management policies, processes, tools and templates on The Costain Way and R&A Intranet Page
• Risk assurance: where required, reviews risk outputs (plans, registers, analysis etc.) for bids and contracts, providing guidance and constructive, practical feedback on areas for improvement, and producing summary assurance reporting outputs
• Key controls: identifies and maintains defined list of material controls, works with relevant functions to design and implement measures to monitor, test and evaluate controls, building reports which summarise overall effectiveness of material controls considering both design and operation
  
  

Essential

Knowledge, Skills, and Experience

• Track record of successfully supporting senior leaders in managing risk (Executive Committee members, Directors and Heads of function)
• Excellent communication, facilitation and influencing skills
• Expertise in risk management techniques including risk definition (descriptions, causes), structuring initial risk ideas into clear risk events, mapping and assessing controls and conducting bow tie analysis
• Experience of implementing enterprise risk management arrangements across an organisation, ensuring that different risk perspectives are coordinated and integrated
• Experience of ERM / GRC tool implementation, including setup and configuration, user access / permissions management, contract management and support arrangements.
  
  

Desirable

• Established project management skills: ability to plan, budget for and manage projects to deliver agreed objectives / outcomes within cost and time constraints
• Proficiency in quantitative risk analysis (QRA) techniques including both Schedule Risk Analysis and Cost Risk modelling
• Experience of leading business improvement / transformational change initiatives
• Experience of business planning, budgeting / target setting, finance processes
• Understanding of typical contract types and the impact on risk arrangements and practice
  
  

Qualifications

Desirable

• IRM Certificate in Enterprise Risk Management
• Project Risk Management qualification (PMI or APM)
• Project or Programme Management qualification (APM PMQ, Axelos MSP)
  
  

Behavioral Attributes

• Excellent communication skills with ability to present and explain complex information to a diverse audience including senior leaders, directors, and executive board members.
• Is aware of the context of own activities within wider business priorities: plans and prepares meetings and reviews to make the most of limited time available with senior leaders and responds proactively to changes in priorities.
• Confident in organising and facilitating workshops and adept at securing buy in and engagement from senior stakeholders
• A strong team player who actively supports others with deliverables to ensure the team delivers its objectives.
• Promotes good risk practice, persuades others of the benefits through a combination of active implementation support and finding achievable, pragmatic solutions
• Builds strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders, negotiating to secure required inputs and ensuring a collaborative approach to overcoming issues
• Autonomy: able to plan and execute complex tasks with minimal supervision, whilst ensuring alignment with overall strategy is maintained
  
  

About Us

Costain helps to improve people’s lives with integrated, leading edge, smart infrastructure solutions across the UK’s energy, water, transportation and defence markets. We help our clients improve their business performance by increasing capacity, improving customer service, safeguarding security, enhancing resilience, decarbonising and delivering increased efficiency. Our vision is to be the UK’s leading smart infrastructure solutions company. We will achieve this by focusing on blue chip clients whose major spending plans are underpinned by strategic national needs, regulatory commitments, legislation or essential performance requirements. We offer our clients leading edge solutions that are digitally optimised through the following five services which cover the whole lifecycle of their assets: future-shaping strategic consultancy; consultancy and advisory; digital technology solutions; asset optimisation and complex programme delivery. Our culture and values underpin everything we do.

Costain appreciate the time and effort taken when applying for one of our positions but, due to the high volume of responses, we are unable to provide individual feedback on candidates at application phase.

We do share individual feedback following an interview .

A Disability Confident employer will generally offer an interview to any applicant that disclose they have a disability and meets the minimum criteria for the job as defined by the employer.

It is important to note that in certain recruitment situations such as high-volume, seasonal and high-peak times, the employer may wish to limit the overall numbers of interviews offered to both disabled people and non-disabled people.

For more details please go to the Disability Confident website:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/disability-confident-campaign