Equipment Planner

An equipment planner works out what loose equipment, furniture and specialist kit a new or refurbished building will need, what it costs, where it goes and when it arrives. The role is most established in healthcare construction - planning everything from hospital beds and scanners to sluice room fittings - but also appears in laboratories, education and defence projects. They sit between the clinical or end-user teams who will use the equipment, the designers who need to know what space and services it requires, and the contractors and suppliers who install it.

Starting salary: £24k–£32k
Live graduate jobs: Search all jobs
Main way in: Direct entry as an assistant or graduate equipment planner with…
They usually ask for: A degree is usual but the subject is genuinely open

Approximate graduate salary

Typically around £24,000–£32,000 to start, though this varies widely by employer, sector and location - private consultancies in London tend to sit at the upper end, while NHS-employed roles follow Agenda for Change bands and regional roles pay less.

What you'd actually do

Building and maintaining equipment schedules - long, detailed databases (often in specialist room data software, or sometimes just large Excel workbooks) listing every item for every room, with dimensions, cost, supplier, service requirements and procurement status
Running or sitting in on user group meetings, where clinicians, lab managers or teachers say what they need in each room, and translating vague requests ('we need somewhere to put the trolleys') into specified, costed items
Checking equipment against architectural and services drawings - confirming a piece of kit physically fits, has the right power supply, drainage, data points, structural support or ventilation, and flagging clashes to the design team
Identifying which existing equipment will be transferred from the old building, what needs replacing and what must be bought new - this 'transfer, reuse, new' exercise drives a large part of the budget

Show 3 more

Getting quotes from suppliers, comparing specifications and feeding cost information into the project budget, then tracking spend as decisions change
Co-ordinating delivery and installation sequencing with the contractor - equipment usually arrives in a tight window near handover, so planners agree storage, access routes, lift capacities and commissioning dates
Keeping version control and audit trails, because equipment lists change constantly and everyone from the cost consultant to the clinical lead needs to know which version is current

How graduates get in

Direct entry as an assistant or graduate equipment planner with a healthcare planning consultancy, project management or cost consultancy, or a specialist equipment planning firm - this is the most common route, though these are small teams and vacancies are irregular rather than annual intakes
Graduate schemes at large multidisciplinary construction consultancies, where you join a project management, cost management or healthcare planning stream and are placed onto equipment workstreams on a hospital or lab project
Internal moves within the NHS - people working in procurement, medical physics, estates, clinical engineering or as a department manager often move into equipment planning on a capital project, sometimes as a secondment first. This is a very common route and means many equipment planners are not graduates fresh from university
Moving across from a clinical or scientific background (nursing, radiography, biomedical science, laboratory work) where you already understand how the equipment is actually used - employers value this highly

Show 2 more

Starting with a medical equipment supplier or distributor in a sales support, applications or technical role, then crossing to the client side
Construction or architectural technologist backgrounds, where you already read drawings fluently and pick up the equipment knowledge on the job

What employers ask for

A degree is usual but the subject is genuinely open. Architecture, architectural technology, construction or quantity surveying, building services engineering, healthcare or facilities management, biomedical science, nursing and other health subjects all appear. No single subject dominates
Most employers ask for a 2:2 or 2:1; this is not a sector with rigid grade filtering, and relevant experience often outweighs classification
Strong spreadsheet and database ability is close to non-negotiable - you will be asked about Excel in interview, and some roles expect you to learn specialist equipment or room data software on the job
Ability to read and interpret construction drawings, or clear willingness to learn - some employers will test this informally

Show 2 more

Any healthcare, laboratory or clinical exposure is a real advantage for the NHS-facing roles, even from a summer job or placement, because you understand the working environment
For site-based roles, a CSCS card (the UK construction site safety card) and often a driving licence, since you will visit live sites and multiple trust estates

Skills that matter

Spreadsheet and data discipline

Equipment schedules run to thousands of line items across hundreds of rooms, and a single mislabelled column or lost version can push wrong information into a design freeze.

Reading drawings and spatial reasoning

You need to look at a floor plan and an elevation and judge whether a scanner, bed or fume cupboard actually fits with the clearances and access it needs.

Drawing requirements out of non-technical users

Clinicians and lab staff describe how they work, not what they need to buy, so you have to ask the right follow-up questions and turn the answers into a specification.

Holding a line politely under pressure

Users ask for upgrades late, budgets are fixed and designs freeze on a date - you spend a lot of time explaining why a change is now expensive or impossible without becoming the person everyone avoids.

Commercial awareness of cost and procurement

You are handling a substantial slice of a project budget and need to understand quotes, lifecycle costs, lead times and public procurement constraints in the NHS.

Methodical sequencing and logistics thinking

Equipment lands in a narrow window before a building opens, so you plan delivery order, storage, installation and commissioning backwards from the handover date.

Putting these on a CV? We counted which skills 12,914 live graduate adverts ask for, and what to do with the answer — part of our application advice.

Where it leads

Assistant or graduate equipment planner - you maintain schedules, take meeting notes, chase supplier information and shadow senior colleagues on user group meetings. Typically a couple of years, though it varies with how many live projects the team has
Equipment planner running your own departments or a smaller scheme end to end, owning the schedule, the user relationships and the equipment budget for your area
Senior equipment planner or equipment lead on a major scheme, managing junior staff, interfacing directly with the project director, cost consultant and contractor, and owning the whole equipment budget
From there the paths fork: some move into broader healthcare planning (designing clinical departments and models of care rather than just their contents), some into project or programme management, some into NHS capital teams client-side, and some into consultancy leadership or running their own practice. Timelines here vary enormously and depend on project availability rather than a fixed ladder
Chartered status through the RICS, CIOB or a healthcare-related institute is possible if your route leans towards surveying or project management, but it is not a standard requirement for the role itself

What people get wrong

“It is a purchasing or procurement job - you place orders from a catalogue.”

Procurement is one part of it. Most of the work is design co-ordination: making sure the building is physically and technically capable of accepting the equipment, which means working with architects and engineers months or years before anything is bought.

“You need to be clinically qualified or an engineer to specify medical equipment.”

Planners co-ordinate and challenge rather than make clinical decisions - the clinical users, medical physics and clinical engineering teams determine what is clinically appropriate. Many successful planners come from construction or administrative backgrounds and learn the equipment.

“It is a desk job with a spreadsheet.”

The spreadsheet is real, but so are site visits in boots and a hard hat, walking live hospital departments to survey existing equipment, and long meetings with ward staff fitted around their shifts.

“It is a well-known graduate career path with structured intakes.”

It is a small, specialist niche that most students have never heard of. Many people arrive in it sideways from the NHS, clinical roles or construction, and vacancies are advertised sporadically rather than through big annual graduate campaigns.

Where this varies

The job differs a lot by setting. In healthcare consultancies and on major hospital schemes it is a recognised specialism with a clear title and career path. Within an NHS trust, equipment planning is often a temporary project post or part of a wider estates, capital or procurement job rather than a permanent role. On laboratory, research, education and defence projects the same work happens but may be called FF&E (furniture, fixtures and equipment) co-ordination and sit inside a project management or interior design team. Scale also matters: on a large new hospital the equipment team may be several people working for years, while on a small refurbishment one person does the whole thing alongside other duties. Procurement rules are far more constrained in the public sector than in private healthcare or commercial lab work.

Search Equipment Planner jobsFrom employers' own careers sites, updated daily Tailor your CV for this roleFree with an account, 3 a month

General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.