Principal Consultant (Transport Policy Monitoring & Evaluation

Job Description

What if you could do the kind of work the world needs? At WSP, you can access our global scale, contribute to landmark projects and connect with the brightest minds in your field to do the best work of your life. You can embrace your curiosity in a culture that celebrates new ideas and diverse perspectives. You can experience a world of opportunity and the chance to shape a career as unique as you.

At WSP, you'll find yourself exploring new opportunities to make the most of your expertise, work with deep technical experts across multiple sectors, and help develop and grow a crucial area of WSP business – transport policy monitoring and evaluation.

WSP's Intelligent Infrastructure discipline works across a wide range of clients in transport and beyond. While the goals of the transport system remain unchanged – to help people and goods move around the country – the underpinning drivers of the system continue to evolve, with priorities around carbon (net zero), climate change resilience, safety and security (zero harm), digitisation, customers (meeting shifting demands and expectation), and efficiency (achieving more for less in fiscally constrained environments) all key considerations of those designing, managing and operating the transport system.

It is essential that policies to meet these sometimes-opposing priorities have robust, credible and usable monitoring and evaluation plans to 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.

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.

• 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 to ensure that your projects bring in the skills needed to meet the project needs.
• Contributing to the growth of the Monitoring and Evaluation expertise area to support delivery against its ambitions.

• A proven technical capability in the design and execution of monitoring and evaluation frameworks of policies, programmes and / or projects. Including the design of impact and process evaluation approaches.
• An understanding of, and experience in, applying different evaluation methods including quasi-experimental and theory-based evaluation methods.
• 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.
• Data visualisation and experience using tools such as Excel, Power BI, R, Python, SPSS or Stata, alongside the ability to translate evidence into clear, actionable insights for clients and stakeholders.
• Experience of applying government guidance on monitoring and evaluation, including the HM Treasury's Magenta and Green Books, or Department for Transport's Transport Appraisal Guidance.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with experience communicating complex evidence and evaluation findings clearly and persuasively through reports, presentations and workshops, tailoring messages to clients, policymakers, technical…