Project Management Egl1

This is an entry-level project management role — the "EGL1" part is almost certainly an internal grading code (employers often label early-careers posts with letters and numbers to mark the first rung of a pay or career band), not a separate profession. You help plan and run pieces of work that have a defined start, end and budget: tracking who is doing what by when, chasing updates, keeping the plan and the risk log current, and preparing the reports that senior people use to decide whether the project is on track. You usually support a more senior project manager and work for an internal business owner (the person whose department the project is for) or an external client.

Starting salary: £25k–£35k
Live graduate jobs: 2 open now
Main way in: Graduate schemes
They usually ask for: Degree subject usually doesn't matter for generalist roles

Approximate graduate salary

Typically somewhere around £25,000–35,000 to start, though this varies a lot — large consultancies, defence, energy and London-based employers sit at or above the top of that, while public sector, charity and smaller regional employers often sit below it. Construction and infrastructure graduate schemes frequently add a car or travel allowance.

What you'd actually do

Updating the project plan — the schedule of tasks, owners and dates — after chasing team members for progress updates, usually in software like MS Project, Smartsheet, Jira or a well-built spreadsheet
Taking minutes and, more importantly, writing up actions from project meetings and then following them up so they actually get done
Maintaining the RAID log (risks, assumptions, issues, dependencies) — a running list of things that could go wrong, things being relied on, and problems that have already landed
Pulling together the weekly or monthly status report: a short RAG-rated summary (red/amber/green) of progress, spend against budget and upcoming milestones for a steering group or client

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Tracking costs — logging invoices, purchase orders and contractor time against the budget, and flagging when a line is heading over
Coordinating the dull but essential logistics: booking workshops, setting up collaboration sites, keeping document versions straight, onboarding new people onto the project
Doing small chunks of analysis or research the project manager hasn't got time for — comparing supplier quotes, mapping a process, summarising stakeholder feedback

How graduates get in

Graduate schemes — common in construction, engineering, defence, energy, IT services, consultancies, banks and the NHS. Many rotate you through project support, planning and commercial roles before you own a project.
Direct entry into a 'project support officer', 'project coordinator', 'PMO analyst' or 'junior project manager' post. PMO stands for Project Management Office — the central team that sets standards and collects reporting across many projects. This is a very common first job and often doesn't require a specific degree.
Internal moves — a lot of project managers start as engineers, analysts, developers, nurses or marketers and drift into coordinating work. If you join a technical graduate scheme, this route stays open.
Degree apprenticeships and the Level 4 Associate Project Manager apprenticeship — a realistic alternative to a degree, and some employers also use apprenticeship funding to train existing graduate hires.

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Placement years and summer internships in construction, infrastructure or consulting, which frequently convert into graduate offers — this is a strong route in the built environment sector in particular.
Less common but real: joining via an administrative or business support role and being given project work, then moving across once you have evidence you can run things.

What employers ask for

Degree subject usually doesn't matter for generalist roles — business, management and social sciences are typical, but so are humanities. The exception is technical sectors: construction and infrastructure often want civil engineering, construction management, quantity surveying or a built-environment degree; IT project roles often want computer science or equivalent experience.
Most graduate schemes ask for a 2:1, some accept a 2:2, and a minority still screen on UCAS points or A-level grades. Smaller employers and direct-entry coordinator roles are usually more flexible.
Professional qualifications are generally done after you start, not before. The common ones are APM (Association for Project Management) — PMQ and the chartered ChPP status — and PRINCE2 Foundation/Practitioner, a structured project method widely used in UK government and large organisations. Agile certifications such as Scrum Master are common in software environments.
Evidence that you have organised something real — a society committee, a fundraising event, a placement project, a part-time job where you coordinated rotas. Employers look for this far more than for project theory.

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Comfort with spreadsheets and scheduling or collaboration tools; some employers test this at assessment centre stage.
Security clearance is required for defence, nuclear and some government work, which normally means UK residency for a set period — worth checking before applying.

Skills that matter

Chasing people politely but relentlessly

Most of the job is getting updates and decisions out of busy people who don't report to you and have no obligation to prioritise your project.

Written summarising

You constantly turn messy meeting discussion and half-finished updates into a page a senior sponsor can read in two minutes and act on.

Numeracy and spreadsheet competence

Budget tracking, forecasting spend and reconciling supplier invoices are a daily part of the job even in non-financial sectors.

Attention to detail in record-keeping

A plan or risk log that is a week out of date is worse than useless, because people make decisions on it anyway.

Reading the politics of a room

Projects stall for human reasons — a team that doesn't want the change, two managers who disagree — and spotting that early is what separates a good PM from an administrator.

Saying no, or at least escalating

Scope creep (work quietly expanding beyond what was agreed) is the single most common reason projects overrun, and catching it depends on junior staff flagging it.

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

Project support / coordinator / PMO analyst — typically your first year or two, supporting someone else's project and learning the organisation's method.
Junior or assistant project manager — you own a small project or a defined workstream within a larger programme, with your own budget and delivery date. Reaching this commonly takes a couple of years, but varies widely by sector and by how much delivery work you're actually given.
Project manager — full ownership of projects of increasing value and risk. Many people take APM PMQ or PRINCE2 Practitioner around this point, and chartered status (ChPP) later.
From there the paths fork: programme manager (running a group of related projects), PMO lead (owning governance and reporting across a portfolio), or a specialism such as planning/scheduling, risk management or commercial and cost control — specialists are well paid and in demand in infrastructure.
Longer term: portfolio or delivery director, head of PMO, management consultancy, or moving into operational line management. Contracting is also common and often better paid, though with no job security — more prevalent in construction, energy and IT than in the public sector.

What people get wrong

“The job title with a code like 'EGL1' means it's a special or technical variant of project management.”

It's an internal grade marker — an employer's way of tagging the entry level of a job family. The work is ordinary early-careers project management, and the code will mean nothing outside that organisation.

“You spend your time making decisions and directing teams.”

Early on you have responsibility without authority. You're accountable for the plan being accurate but you can't instruct the engineers, developers or clinicians doing the work — influence, persistence and escalating well are how you get things moved.

“Project management is a generic skill you can apply anywhere, so the sector doesn't matter much.”

Sector knowledge matters enormously after the first couple of years. A construction PM reading a programme of works and a software PM running sprints are doing quite different jobs, and moving between them usually means stepping back.

“You need a project management qualification before anyone will hire you.”

Most employers train you in their own method after you join, and a PRINCE2 certificate with no delivery experience carries little weight. Demonstrated organising experience is the more useful thing to arrive with.

Where this varies

The day-to-day differs sharply by sector. In construction and infrastructure you'll spend time on site, deal with contractors and sub-contractors, and work closely with quantity surveyors on cost; the method is usually a traditional staged plan. In software and digital you're more likely to be in an agile environment — short delivery cycles, stand-up meetings, a backlog of work rather than a fixed long-range schedule — and the role may be called delivery manager or scrum master instead. In government and the NHS, PRINCE2 and formal business cases dominate, and timescales and approval chains are longer. Consultancies put you in front of clients and on changing assignments much earlier, often with more travel. Organisation size matters too: at a large employer you'll be one specialist cog in a PMO, while at a small one you may be effectively running things on your own within months.

See all 2 live Project Management Egl1 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.