Bid and Programme Management Graduate 2022

Thales is a business where brilliant people from all over the world come together to share ideas and inspire each other. In aerospace, transportation, defence, security and space, our architects design innovative solutions that make our tomorrow's possible. Together we offer fantastic opportunities for committed employees to learn and develop their career with us.

At Thales UK, we research, develop, and supply technology and services that impact the lives of millions of people each day to make life better, and keep us safer. We innovate across five major industries; Aerospace, Defence, Ground Transportation, Security and Space. 

The role

The Bid and Programme Management (BPM) stream within the Thales UK Graduate Development Programme (GDP) has been designed to provide a diverse and robust understanding of bid and project management capability within Thales UK.

Thales UK manages a complex portfolio of 200+ significant projects and a similar number of key bids per year. Graduates will have the opportunity to work within a number of different UK based business units, including:

• Transport
• Security
• Defence
• Aerospace

The BPM Graduate Development Programme is a 2-4 year rotational programme, comprising BPM skills and leadership training alongside four work placements. During this time you will gain experience within a number of different roles and businesses, developing a variety of bid and project management skills and competencies. Upon completion of the programme the aim is to be placed into a permanent role within the Bids and Project Management (BPM) function. The focus of this role will be either, Project Planning & Control, Project Management or Bid Management as the starting point of your BPM career.

The BPM GDP offers graduates the opportunity to study towards a formally recognised international certification in Project Management, and engage with the wider project management profession with the Association of Project Managers (APM) and the International Project Management Association (IPMA).

You will be expected to complete a number of short-term placements (6+ months) across various Thales sites and businesses in the UK so flexibility on your location is required for this role. Our main sites are: Crawley, Glasgow, Bristol, Belfast, Reading, Cheadle, London and Templecombe.

Responsibilities

• Undertake bid and project management activities in support of the Bid and Project Management Team to ensure the successful delivery of the project
• Assist with the creation of bids and proposals
• Assist with the creation and maintenance of the project schedule; generate, maintain and monitor the progress of work packages; establish the schedule impact of work being complete/not complete against project milestones
• Support with updating budgetary information; updating resource information and validating the derived resource profiles
• Provide assistance for the provision of governance and support on project schedule generation, structuring and reporting
• Administer and maintain the project risk and opportunity register
• Provide support in performance measurement and variance reporting
• Provide assistance to the nominated Project Manager and their team for the extraction and coordination of data for reporting or analysis purposes

Requirements

You will be on track to or have achieved a bachelor’s degree in any subject.

To ensure the successful delivery of our projects you would need to enjoy working to tight deadlines, so if you are highly organised, able to prioritise and work flexibly then a career in BPM could be for you! Collaboration is also extremely important, we are looking for people who demonstrate leadership capability but are also able to work as a team with a strong delivery focus. We work in a fast-changing environment so the ability to work proactively and adapt are also important.