Quantity Surveyor & Projects Manager

Can you lead complex capital projects from concept through to successful delivery, ensuring quality, value for money, and stakeholder satisfaction?

Have you managed large-scale estates, engineering, or lifecycle replacement projects while balancing competing priorities, budgets, and timescales?

Are you confident working with contractors, consultants, and suppliers to deliver high-quality project outcomes and drive continuous improvement?

If so, we’d love to hear from you!

The Estates Management Group (EMG) plays a key role in ensuring the Agency’s estate remains safe, sustainable, and fit for the future. Working across a diverse property portfolio, the team delivers strategic infrastructure improvements, modernisation programmes, and operational support that enable business continuity. Through collaboration with internal and external partners, the team drives innovation, efficiency, and long-term estate performance while supporting the Agency’s wider goals and ambitions.

Joining our department comes with many benefits, including:

• Employer pension contribution of 28.97% of your salary. Read more about Civil Service Pensions here
• 25 days annual leave, increasing by 1 day each year of service (up to a maximum of 30 days annual leave), plus 8 bank holidays a privilege day for the King’s birthday
• Flexible working options where we encourage a great work-life balance.

Read more in the Benefits section below!

Find out more about what it's like working at DVLA.

Join us in a key leadership role where you will shape and oversee the delivery of capital projects and lifecycle replacement programmes across a diverse estate. You will lead projects from concept to completion, ensuring robust governance, effective supplier performance, and value for money. Working with a wide range of stakeholders, you will help maintain safe, efficient, and sustainable facilities while driving continuous improvement and supporting the Agency’s long-term strategic objectives.

Your responsibilities will include, but aren’t limited to:

• Preparation of Specifications to advise and inform commercial procurement of services and project delivery via the Hard Services Contract and other available Commercial Frameworks. Undertake the technical evaluation of tenders, ensuring compliance with specifications and organisational requirements.
• Provide effective management relating to the estate projects and life cycle replacement works affecting the efficient running of the Agency’s sites. Responsible for reporting of regular and timely information to the G7 Head of hard services and/or G6 Head of Estates.
• Manage the supplier’s undertaking all large scale or complex projects and life-cycle replacement. Initial point of contact for complaints and issues in relation to project services.
• Provide capital projects and lifecycle replacement knowledge to EMG SMT with a pipeline of projects and major works including decarbonisation and environmental improvements to help Develop future Estates Strategy.
• Reporting against Capital Projects and Lifecycle replacement budget, performance, risks, dependencies, and mitigating actions. Act as a liaison point for the contract provider and professional advisors on new projects when raising commissions / feasibility studies.
• Liaising with key stakeholders to identify and manage potential issues associated with planned projects and lifecycle replacement work, to ensure that all areas of the estate are always available to the business.
• Management of direct reports to deliver capital projects and lifecycle replacement work across all Agency sites. Providing guidance, knowledge, thought leadership and mentoring to direct reports and wider members of the hard services team.
• Financial management, financial evaluation of tenders and proposals, to ensure VFM. Managing final accounts and variations.

The role requires participation in the Hard Services team's on-call rota to provide operational support. A non-pensionable Recruitment and Retention Allowance of £3,000 per annum is currently payable for this requirement. Please note that the allowance is subject to review and may change over time.

Great line management is important to us as an organisation, and we will equip and support line managers to develop the skills set out in the Civil Service Line Management Standards.

For further information on the role, please read the role profile. Please note that the role profile is for information purposes only - whilst all elements are relevant to the role, they may not all be assessed during the recruitment process. This job advert will detail exactly what will be assessed during the recruitment process.

Quantity Surveying - Degree, Level 7 Diploma

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.

How to apply:

Our selection process ensures a comprehensive assessment of each applicant's qualifications, skills, and potential fit within our organisation.

The selection process for this role will be:

Stage 1: Sift of CV and personal statement

Stage 2: Interview

You must be successful at each stage to progress to the next stage.

Stage 1: Sift

At sift, you will be assessed against the following Success Profile elements:

• Experience – you will be asked to provide a CV (unlimited wordcount) and personal statement (1000-word count). Please provide evidence of your Experience of the following: Experience in leading the successful delivery of projects and major estates programmes from specification through to completion.
• Experience in developing specifications, evaluating tenders, and managing supplier performance to ensure compliance, quality, and value for money.
• Experience in maintaining professional expertise and providing leadership to drive continuous improvement, innovation, and best practice across the estates function
• Experience managing contractors, audit programmes, and direct reports to ensure compliance with organisational, statutory, and health & safety requirements, while delivering safe and effective estates services.

The sift will take place week commencing 12th October 2026.

Stage 2: Interview

At interview stage, you will be assessed against the following Success Profile elements:

• Behaviours – Making Effective Decisions and Seeing the Big Picture
• Experience

The interviews will take place week commencing 26th October 2026.

This interview will be conducted in person at our Swansea office (DVLA, Longview Road, Swansea, SA6 7JL). Further details will be provided to you should you be selected for interview.

You can find out more about our hiring process, how to apply, and application and interview guidance on our careers site (opens in a new window).

Please note that we will try to meet the dates set out in the advert. There may be occasions when these dates will change

Further information on the selection process

We will also hold a 12-month reserve list for this role, which may lead to potential opportunities beyond the role you applied for.

Reasonable Adjustments

As a Disability Confident Leader employer, we are committed to ensuring that the recruitment process is fair, accessible and allows all candidates to perform at their best. If a person with a visible or non-visible disability is substantially disadvantaged, we have a duty to make reasonable changes to our processes.

Complete the “Assistance required” section in the “Additional requirements” page of your application form to tell us what changes or help you might need during the recruitment process. For instance, you may need wheelchair access at an interview, or if you’re deaf, a Language Service Professional.

If you need a reasonable adjustment so that you can complete your application, you should contact Government Recruitment Service via dftrecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk as soon as possible before the closing date to discuss your needs.

Document Accessibility

This job advert contains links to the DfT Careers website. Our website provides useful guidance and information that can support you during the application process. If you are experiencing accessibility problems with any attachments on this advert or the information on our website, please contact the email address in the 'Contact point for applicants' section.

Further Information

For more information about how we hire, and for useful tips on submitting your application for this role, visit the How We Hire page of our DfT Careers website. You can find detailed information about the recruitment process and what to expect when applying for a role.

Pre-employment Checking

If your application is successful but you have been dismissed from the Civil Service, your application could be removed at the pre-employment checking stage depending on the nature of the dismissal.

Applicants who are successful at interview will be, as part of pre-employment screening, subject to a check on the Internal Fraud Database (IFD). This check will provide information about employees who have been dismissed for fraud or dishonesty offences. This check also applies to employees who resign or otherwise leave before being dismissed for fraud or dishonesty had their employment continued. Any applicant’s details held on the IFD will be refused employment. A candidate is not eligible to apply for a role within the Civil Service if the application is made within a 5-year period following a dismissal for carrying out internal fraud against government.

All external applicants and current employees of accredited non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs) will be required to undergo a Social Media Check. A Social Media Check is a review of your publicly available online activity, typically across platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and others. The purpose is to identify any public posts or content that could raise concerns for employers, such as:

• Hate speech or discriminatory behaviour
• Threats or acts of violence
• Illegal activity or substance misuse
• Sexually explicit material
• Extremist views or affiliations

Importantly, this check does not involve hacking into your accounts or accessing private messages. It only considers content you have chosen to make public. Employers use this kind of screening to help ensure their workplace remains safe, inclusive, and aligned with company values. It’s not about judging your personality or lifestyle - it’s about checking for potential red flags that might affect the role or company culture. If you have questions or concerns about the social media check, we would be happy to explain in more detail what’s being looked at and how your data is handled securely and fairly.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.