Planning Engineer

A planning engineer builds and maintains the programme (the detailed schedule) for a construction, engineering or infrastructure project - working out what tasks happen in what order, how long each takes, and what happens to the end date when something slips. They work for contractors, engineering consultancies, clients such as utilities and rail operators, or specialist project-controls consultancies, and they spend most of their time inside scheduling software and talking to the engineers and site managers who actually do the work.

Starting salary: £27k–£35k
Live graduate jobs: 8 open now
Main way in: Graduate schemes at large main contractors, infrastructure…
They usually ask for: A degree in civil engineering, construction management…

Approximate graduate salary

Typically around £27,000–£35,000 to start, though this varies widely - major contractors and clients in London, and sectors like nuclear and rail, tend to sit at the higher end, while smaller regional contractors sit lower. Site-based roles may add allowances such as a car or travel payment.

What you'd actually do

Building and updating the project programme in scheduling software (Primavera P6 and Microsoft Project are the two most common), linking thousands of activities together with logic so the software can calculate the critical path - the chain of tasks that determines the finish date
Chasing site managers, engineers and subcontractors for progress updates: what percentage of each activity is done, what started late, what is stuck waiting on a design or a delivery
Running the monthly (sometimes weekly) programme update and producing the reports that go to the project manager and client - progress S-curves, milestone trackers, look-ahead programmes covering the next few weeks
Modelling 'what if' scenarios: if the steelwork arrives three weeks late, or an extra shift is added, what does that do to the completion date and who is responsible for the delay

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Sitting in progress and coordination meetings, often as the person who has to say out loud that the current plan does not add up
Working with the commercial and quantity surveying team on delay analysis when a claim for extra time or money is being made or defended
Pulling the planning side of a bid together on tenders - sketching a credible construction sequence and duration for work the company has not won yet

How graduates get in

Graduate schemes at large main contractors, infrastructure clients and engineering consultancies - usually advertised as 'graduate planner', 'graduate planning engineer' or under a broader 'project controls' or 'commercial and project management' scheme. This is the most common structured route.
Direct entry as an assistant or junior planner, often at a subcontractor or specialist consultancy, where you learn on one project under a senior planner. Common and perfectly respectable - many senior planners started this way.
Sideways move from a site-based role: a graduate site engineer or project engineer who shows an aptitude for programmes often gets pulled into planning after a year or two. Very common route, and some employers prefer it because you have seen how the work is actually built.
Industrial placement or summer placement during a civil, mechanical or building-related degree, converting into a graduate offer. Placements carry a lot of weight in construction recruitment.

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Project controls apprenticeships and non-degree entry exist, particularly in rail, nuclear and defence, and people do progress from these to full planning engineer roles - this route is slower to the same place but real.
Less commonly, moving across from a defence, aerospace, oil and gas or pharmaceutical background, where the same scheduling skills apply under different jargon.

What employers ask for

A degree in civil engineering, construction management, building services, mechanical or electrical engineering, quantity surveying or a similar built-environment subject is the usual expectation. Subject matters more here than in many graduate jobs because you need to understand how things get built.
That said, some employers - especially in nuclear, defence and large programme environments - will take maths, physics, geography or business graduates into project controls and teach the technical context. This varies a lot by sector.
Grades: a 2:1 is the common bar on structured graduate schemes, with 2:2s accepted more often on direct-entry roles or where you have placement experience. Many smaller contractors care far more about site exposure than classification.
Any exposure to Primavera P6 or Microsoft Project is a genuine advantage and worth getting through a placement, a short course or a university project - but most employers expect to train you on the software.

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A CSCS card (the construction skills certification card needed for site access) and sometimes a driving licence, if the role involves visiting sites.
Professional qualification is optional but valued: chartership with the Institution of Civil Engineers or Chartered Institute of Building, or membership of the Association for Project Management. Some employers fund and expect this; others never mention it.

Skills that matter

Critical path logic and network scheduling

The whole job rests on understanding how activities depend on each other and which delays actually matter versus which absorb into float (spare time in the schedule).

Fluency in Primavera P6 or MS Project

These are the tools the programme lives in, and a planner who can restructure a 5,000-line schedule quickly is far more useful than one who can only read it.

Understanding how construction actually sequences

You cannot write a credible programme for a concrete frame or a rail possession if you do not know what has to cure, set, be tested or be handed over before the next trade starts.

Getting honest information out of busy site people

Progress figures are often optimistic or vague, and much of the job is politely interrogating a site manager until you know what is genuinely complete.

Data handling and Excel (increasingly Power BI)

Programme data has to be turned into progress curves, earned value figures and dashboards that non-planners can act on.

Holding your position under pressure

Programmes carry commercial consequences, so you will be asked to make the end date look better than it is and need to be able to explain, calmly and with evidence, why it cannot.

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

Graduate or assistant planner, typically on one project under a senior planner, learning the software and the update cycle. Usually a year or two, though structured schemes run to a set length and direct-entry roles do not.
Planning engineer / project planner running the programme for a project or a major workstream yourself, owning the monthly update and presenting to the project manager and client.
Senior planning engineer, handling larger or more complex projects, mentoring juniors, contributing to bids and getting involved in delay analysis.
From here the paths genuinely fork. Some move into lead planner or planning manager roles covering a portfolio of projects; some go into broader project controls management (bringing cost, risk and planning together); some move into project or programme management; and some specialise in forensic delay analysis, which sits close to construction law and claims consultancy and can be well paid.
Timelines vary widely - a few years on a fast-moving major programme can count for more than a decade of small repetitive projects, and sector moves (into rail, nuclear or power) often reset or accelerate progression depending on demand.

What people get wrong

“It is a desk job for people who do not want to be on site.”

The best planners spend a lot of time walking the site, because a programme written purely from drawings and spreadsheets will be wrong in ways only someone who has seen the work can spot. Many roles are site-based or split between site and office.

“You just type what the project manager tells you into the software.”

A planner is often the person with the clearest, most evidenced view of whether a project is actually on track, and part of the job is challenging optimistic assumptions from people more senior than you.

“It is purely technical and sits apart from the money side.”

Programme and commercial are tightly linked - late completion triggers damages, extensions of time and claims worth large sums, so planning records and delay analysis frequently end up as evidence in contractual disputes.

“It only exists in construction.”

Planning engineers and project-controls planners work across rail, nuclear decommissioning, defence, water, energy, oil and gas, major IT and infrastructure programmes, and manufacturing - the scheduling discipline transfers, even though the technical content does not.

Where this varies

Practice differs a lot by sector and by which side of the contract you sit on. On a main contractor's site team you will be close to the work, updating a programme weekly and arguing about last week's rain; for a client organisation or a project-controls consultancy you may be further from the trowels and more focused on assurance, reporting and integrating many contractors' programmes into one. Rail, nuclear and defence programmes tend to be more process-heavy with formal earned value management and strict schedule quality rules, while housebuilding and smaller commercial projects can be far more informal, sometimes run in Microsoft Project or even Excel. Job titles blur too: 'planner', 'planning engineer', 'project controls engineer' and 'scheduler' often describe the same work, and 'project controls' usually means planning plus cost and risk. Note the separate and unrelated meaning of 'planner' in town planning - that is a different profession entirely.

See all 8 live Planning Engineer 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.