This article was first published by HR Grapevine in April 2025, available here.
At 160 years old, Costain is one of the UK’s oldest infrastructure companies, with a rich heritage and history of projects ranging from the Channel Tunnel to the Thames Barrier.
It covers four strategic markets around energy, transportation, water, and defence, providing engineering and construction services in a wide range of what Catherine Warbrick, Costain’s Chief People and Sustainability Officer, dubs “excitingly complex projects.”
Accordingly, a breadth of skills is needed across the company, from data scientists and digital architects to environmental specialists; but with skills in high demand and short supply, attention has turned to ensuring career mobility and accessibility within the firm.
Warbrick speaks to HR Grapevine about Costain’s culture of career mobility, from a project to refresh the firm’s job architecture to the pertinent example of her own 18-year career at Costain across five different departments.
Why is it so important for Costain to proactively attract a new generation of talent?
“About 3,500 people work directly for us, but on any given day within our entire supply chain that goes up to 14,000. And we have seen, through the National Infrastructure Commission, that there is going to be a huge investment in the markets in which we are operating over the next ten years, meaning there is an equally huge demand for skills—in an industry in which there is a current shortage.
That’s why it’s so important that we look at where we’re going to get the skills from, including early careers, so there’s enough supply to meet demand.”
“We are very visible with our early careers pipeline, promoting that we want people to experience different sectors and build their careers at Costain, rather than feeling like they have to leave our organisation just because they want to try something different.”
Catherine Warbrick Chief people and sustainability officer, Costain
So, how are you building a healthy supply of (early careers) talent?
“It's about broadening the pool of where we're looking for talent, increasingly doing a lot of work around school engagement, with colleges and university technical colleges, and with universities.
We’re looking at what young people want from their organisations. At Costain, we are a purpose-led organisation increasingly hearing that people want to work for companies that are doing meaningful work. So, that’s how we talk about ourselves, about the industry and the value it can create, about what we believe in, and about how we go to work from a responsible business perspective.
We are very visible with our early careers pipeline, promoting that we want people to experience different sectors and build their careers at Costain, rather than feeling like they have to leave our organisation just because they want to try something different
There is an age-old issue of a high volume of people going into STEM subjects, but a much smaller volume going into construction or engineering. It’s up to us to show it’s an exciting place to be, with lots of opportunities for career growth and purposeful, meaningful work.”
How do you show employees that it’s a place for them to grow their careers?
“By creating a network of graduates and early careers with accessibility to managers and leaders within the business. We are very visible with our early careers pipeline, promoting that we want people to experience different sectors and build their careers at Costain, rather than feeling like they have to leave our organisation just because they want to try something different.
I'm hugely lucky. I've had about five different careers, all within the past 18 years at Costain. I joined as an environmental advisor then went into corporate responsibility; I've worked in communications; I've worked in investor relations; and then in learning and development corporate responsibility and in HR before joining the executive board.
Costain invests significantly in development programs for people to allow them to progress. Those exciting opportunities are hugely important for our grads and apprentices.”
What are the core challenges you’ve come up against in engaging and retaining a diverse workforce?
“We want to make sure Costain is a great and inclusive place to work for everybody – we bedded it into our core values and behaviours during a recent refresh – making sure that people feel that they are included, they're valued, respected, and able to be themselves.
We've got six thriving employee networks that all have an executive sponsor – I’m the sponsor for our LGBT+ network – and we make sure issues raised in those networks result in making Costain a more inclusive place to work.
For example, our women's network helped us create Costain’s ‘Empower Programme,’ a development programme for women within the organisation to give them the tools and confidence to focus on their career development and thrive professionally.
Also, our REACH (Race, Ethnicity, & Cultural Heritage) network has led to reverse mentoring and voluntarily disclosing our ethnicity pay gap, and through our work with our DaWN (Disability and Wellbeing) network, we have developed our disability-confident leadership, pushing us make sure our hiring and training processes are accessible. That was crucial in our recent head office move into London, impacting the principles of the design of that space so it was an inclusive and accessible place.
We've done allyship training with our senior managers across the business and we were very pleased to host the launch of the Infrastructure Diversity Charter in February alongside the National Infrastructure Commission and Infrastructure Matters.
Part of the nature of the work in our sector is that the majority of people are outside of the office on-site... having these systems and insights helps to bring a geographically dispersed workforce under one banner, providing that transparency and connectivity
The results have been great. We’ve been named a Disability Confident Leader by the Business Disability Forum and we're really pleased to be a Time Top 50 employer for Gender Equality, with parity on our main board and executive board, so we’re tackling those barriers.”
"Costain invests significantly in development programs for people to allow them to progress. Those exciting opportunities are hugely important for our grads and apprentices.”
Catherine Warbrick Chief people and sustainability officer, Costain
Can you talk through the project you embarked on to refresh Costain’s job architecture?
“It’s not just the job architecture, but also our whole ecosystem of HR processes and policies, including the December launch of a new HR system. We’re getting really good feedback on it, but I keep asking people every day!
But the job architecture project involved looking at the job families that we’ve got within the organisation - whether that be HR, engineering, communications, and so on – and looking at the different levels, roles, and progression routes, articulating what they are and building better pathways between them.
You start with your architecture based on your organisational design. Look at the different roles within each job family and map out the skills, competencies, and attributes needed at all levels. That gives people greater visibility over how they move throughout their own job discipline as well as how they can transitioning across families.
It shows the professional development and transferrable skills needed if someone wants to jump into a different discipline. The new HR system supports that as well because it gives everyone better data and visibility over that information, meaning managers can help their team make better decisions about their careers.”
Why is transparency so important?
“It's about the data and being able to look at what insight it’s giving us, where we need to focus our talent development programmes, and where we need to work with line managers to make sure we’re delivering that employee experience with high-performing teams.
Part of the nature of the work in our sector is that the majority of people are outside of the office on-site, whether it’s a road project, at a power station, or building HS2.
Having these systems and insights helps to bring a geographically dispersed workforce under one banner, providing that transparency and connectivity.”
What further plans do you have to continue creating an inclusive, engaging, and attractive workplace?
“We've just recently run our engagement survey, something we do every year alongside regular pulse checks. We've consistently increased our engagement across the last few years, but it gives us an insight into where we need to focus.
Wellbeing will continue to be a big focus for us, looking at mental health and continuing our partnership with The Samaritans. And we recently introduced enhanced carer’s leave that goes above and beyond the statutory entitlement, and our people with caring responsibilities – and their loved ones – are already benefiting from this. And as part of a celebration of our 160-year history, we’re running a campaign that encourages every employee to take two paid volunteering days to help their local community and transform career prospects for people across the country and talk about what they’re doing.
We do a lot for the communities in which we work, including with The King’s Trust, but we link that back to team development and team building. That’s going to continue being a huge push for us in our anniversary celebrations and beyond.”
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