Senior Economist

National Highways is seeking a Senior Economist to support both business activities and one-off projects, providing vital economic advice to ensure project teams have the necessary information for effective decision-making. In this role, you will be responsible for producing value for money (VfM) statements for individual schemes, projects, and programmes, which are crucial for the Investment Decision Committees in making informed decisions. As a Senior Economist you will influence decisions around the spending for our Third Road Investment Period (2026-2030). Your economic insights will help to secure funding for National Highways and inform choices around building new road capacity; improving the quality of the existing network; addressing challenges around safety, the environment and sustainability; and ensuring the network supports economic performance across the country. This role will be based from any one of our National Highways offices. What you'll be leading on: Act as business partner for investment projects of medium-to-high value and contentious investment and operational proposals. This will involve working closely with project leads at an early stage in the development of their analysis, providing the economics content of business cases to advise whether this is correctly specified and ensuring the capacity and capability exists in project teams to deliver it. Undertake research projects to investigate and identify technical improvements to existing appraisal methods and seize opportunities to support the development of new processes and methods for the industry. Act as intelligent clients for modelling impacts of National Highways activities, working closely with modelling experts to define scenarios and options in line with guidance and their own professional judgement. Advising Project Managers of schemes if their road scheme is expected to deliver wider economic benefits and will recommend appropriate strategies for incorporating these in an assessment of value for money. Provide feedback to management on the functioning of business processes to support continuous improvement for the organisation, providing an exceptional value service for the organisation. To be successful: Degree with a significant economics component or Masters in Economics. Knowledge of economics in the transport and highways industry (desirable). Excellent written and verbal communication skills with a track record of translating complex economic language and concepts to messages for non-experts. Experience of working in the public sector in economics or working in infrastructure in either public or private sector. A bit about us Here at National Highways, we manage and improve the strategic road network to make journeys safer, smoother and more reliable. Our priorities are safety, customers and delivery. The Customer, Strategy and Communications directorate plays a critical role in National Highways. We set the course for strategic roads, enabling the company to deliver economic and social benefits through meeting the needs of our customers and clients, as well as our regulatory obligations. We are the focal point within National Highways responsible for providing the corporate strategic planning function for the organisation. You will join an existing team of 13 economists working at the strategic centre of the Company. The team provide economic advice across the business covering from major projects, operations and renewals and the strategy for the next road period. We deliver critical analytical support, provide strategic direction for our customer service imperative, partner with colleagues across the business to devise and deliver communications activities, and we shape, lead and drive the overall transformation of National Highways.

#J-18808-Ljbffr