Protection and Commissioning Engineer - SPN

Protection and Commissioning Engineer - SPN

80507- Protection and Commissioning Engineer

This Protection and Commissioning Engineer will report to the Lead Protection and Commissioning Engineer and will work within Capital Programme based in several locations in our SPN licence area. You will be a permanent employee.

You will attract a salary of £80,557 plus car and a bonus of 3%.

If you are successful, you will need to undertake a medical and DBS reference check.

Close Date: 20/04/2025

We also provide the following additional benefits:

• Reservist Leave – Additional 18 days full pay and 22 unpaid
• Personal Pension Plan – Personal contribution rates of 4% or 5% (UK Power Networks will make a corresponding contribution of 8% or 10%)
• Tenancy Loan Deposit Scheme, Season Ticket Loan
• Tax efficient benefits: Cycle to Work, Home & Tech, and Green Car Leasing Schemes
• Occupational Health support
• Switched On – scheme providing discount on hundreds of retailers’ products
• Discounted gym membership
• Employee Assistance Programme

Job Purpose

• Plan and perform commissioning testing of all types of substation equipment at all voltage levels following current procedures.
• Perform witnessing of manufacturers commissioning tests to ensure quality assurance and compliance.

Knowledge and Experience Required

You will hold either a relevant engineering degree or Higher National HNC/HND qualification. It is desirable that you have network operational experience as an Authorised Person (AP) of which, a period of time would be as a commissioning engineer.

This is a complex field requiring high technical understanding and proficiency and will include the ability to apply practical engineering sense from first principles using a logical disciplined approach to problem solving. Additional IT skills will allow interaction from laptop to complex modern relay schemes to programme, test, extract fault records and interpret results with a right first-time approach.

Principal Accountabilities

• Ensure safety management prevails throughout all areas and that safety performance is maintained within parameters defined by the Executive. Promote the zero harm philosophy.
• Plan and manage the programme of commissioning work testing and plant acceptance testing leading to safe energisation and successful project completion for both internal and external customers.
• Develop and agree commissioning plans and programmes for projects applying sound engineering knowledge to set standards and ensure thorough and complete testing of new schemes.
• At design reviews working with in-house, contractor and supplier experts, evaluate designs which deliver optimisation and leads to scheme design understanding, reduced risk and complete testing methodology.
• Check and apply software programmable logic and settings to protection schemes checking operational and making adjustments to the scheme logic.
• During commissioning testing, diagnose problems and propose modifications to scheme design to provide desired operability.
• As a recognised expert, investigate, advise, diagnose and correct maloperations that occur during the life of the equipment. Drawing on the skills of senior commissioning engineers, collaboration with technical experts in other organisations propose the root cause and to develop permanent solutions to the issues. Often this is required to tight timescales when network equipment has failed in service.
• Work with Network Control, planning and authorising safe energisation of plant onto the network.
• To ensure that Customer Minutes Lost (CML) and Customer Interruptions (CI) are minimised as a result of the activities of commissioning new plant and that schemes will deliver lower numbers over the life of the project.
• To witness contractors testing and to coordinate the use of test sheets, test routines and policy applied.
• Ensure that all settings applied to relays are confirmed back into our database before energisation. All as-built records are completed by contractors and employees to ensure records of work are maintained.

Nature and Scope

Commissioning and the associated quality assurance occur throughout the process of delivering the network capital programme. From the early broad design review to detailed design checks at the later stages. Equipment is checked, tested, safely energised and records updated as part of the process. The role is one of teamwork with many other specialists and colleagues.

Commissioning equipment requires communication and understanding with technical staff, Contractors, Suppliers, and Customers and internally with designers and project managers. Technical problems that occur on site are normally handled locally where you will find a way to achieve the end often without reference to higher authority. Applying precedents, you will make decisions about a way forward. Often there is no right answer. For this reason, communication must be unambiguous. Risk is often reduced by an ability to understand and rationalise conflicting points of view to reach an optimum solution.

Work is normally on sites with varying degrees of accommodation. The majority of the work is site-based including outdoor and indoor construction areas and site-based office locations. Work often takes place outside normal hours to lower the risk of customer interruptions whilst new plant is commissioned and tested. The planning process towards this can be very long term.

There will be limited technical guidance provided and you may have to request help. General remote managerial supervision is provided. You will contribute to the development of commissioning testing. Outline rules and policies exist to guide staff. New developments are being incorporated into designs all the time resulting in your learning. Commissioning engineers are often required to provide expertise to operational staff when faults or failures affect customers' supplies.

The workload tends to be peaked towards the summer and early winter months and as a result of network outage risk, customer requirements and the demands of the programme require flexible working times. You will have to work outside normal hours. You will be a major influence on prioritisation and planning of work.

Decisions on testing and energisation lay with you. You will normally be the technical authority on site for solving problems, faults, failures.

Health & Safety Responsibilities

Managers and supervisors carry both legal and company responsibilities for ensuring the health and safety of their employees, those under their control and those who might be affected by the work undertaken, i.e. public, visitors and employees of other organisations. This includes briefing individuals working for them and ensuring there is the necessary understanding, competence and application of requirements to work safely and without harming the environment.

Employees will ensure they understand the health and safety risks involved in their work activities and their responsibility to apply the controls needed to manage those risks to acceptable levels. Similarly where work activities can have an adverse impact upon the environment, and where there are legal requirements, employees will understand those impacts and the controls they must ensure are applied.

Employees need to be aware that for some craft and operational roles that work at height, or use fall arrest devices, there is an upper weight limit of 116Kg due to maximum safe working load of the safety equipment that is used.

We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, colour, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender, gender identity or expression, or veteran status. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace.

If you have any queries in connection to this vacancy or your application, please contact us at careers@ukpowernetworks.co.uk quoting the vacancy reference number and a member of the team will get in touch with you as soon as possible.