Graduate Planner Review

Honestly, it's been a solid experience so far. I joined the grad scheme in September 2025 and I've been on the A57 Link Road since then, and I've actually been trusted with real work rather than just shadowing people, which I appreciate. My manager's pretty hands-off, so I've had to figure a lot out myself, but that's pushed me to develop faster than I think I would have with someone hovering over me.
Getting time on site, including a stint with the structures team, has probably been the most useful part, I feel like it's one thing to build logic in a programme and another to actually see how a sequence plays out on site. I've also felt supported in going for my MCIOB and APM, which matters to me since I enjoy the challenge of always working towards something which challenges me.
One thing worth mentioning is that a lot of my technical development has come from me chasing it myself rather than structured mentoring, I believe at times you need to throw yourself in uncomfortable situations in order to exceed in your career, and the only person who is capable of doing this is yourself.

My main role is as a Graduate Planner on the A57 Link Road, which means building and maintaining the programme in P6, tracking progress against baseline, and flagging where activities are falling behind so the team can react early. Day to day that's a lot of talking to the delivery teams to check whether activities are actually progressing as planned, and if not, digging into why, then writing that up into reports and tracking planned vs actual data so we've got a clear, honest picture of where the programme stands.
More recently I did a secondment with the structures team on site, which was probably the part I've enjoyed most so far. Being out there seeing sequencing happen in real time, rather than just planning it from a desk, made a massive difference to how I understand programme logic now, I can look at an activity in P6 and actually picture why it's sequenced that way.
If I had to pick what I enjoy most overall, it's the technical planning side, critical path analysis, working out why a programme is logically structured the way it is, and problem-solving when something's not tracking to plan. I find that more engaging than the purely administrative reporting side, though I get why both matter.

Yes

Because Balfour Beatty allows you to grow beyond just your role, if you're interested in spending few months in a different department the team will try their best to set this up for the individual. This flexibility is key as someone new into the construction industry will not know what they want to do for their rest of their career for 100%.