Assistant Building Service Manager Recruitment for Capital City College Group

Background

Capital City College Group is a group of further education colleges in London. It asked Maxwell Stephens to recruit an Assistant Building Services Manager to support the head of building services across the group's sites. The post is permanent, full time, and reports to the Deputy Director of Estates and Facilities.

The Challenge

This is a technical deputy role, not a general facilities post. The postholder assists with the running of building, engineering, maintenance, fabric, fire and estates informatics services, and deputises for the Building Services Manager at committees, working groups and project teams. Beyond that, the role carries line management of electrical and mechanical staff, building fabric disciplines, site managers and caretakers.

The compliance load is heavy. The postholder acts as an Authorised Person across pressure systems, lifts, medical gas pipelines, high and low voltage electrics, emergency generation, water hygiene and legionella control, gas, boiler and steam plant, ventilation and air conditioning, and sterilisation equipment. An engineering background was preferred, alongside a professional body membership and experience of managing a large estate's engineering systems. The person also had to cope with budgets, procurement of specialist contractors, an out-of-hours on-call rota and a safeguarding setting, where an enhanced DBS check applies.

Our Approach

• We agreed the brief in detail, separating what had to be proven in engineering and statutory compliance from what could be developed in post, and confirmed how the deputising element sat alongside the line management responsibilities.
• We searched education, healthcare and large multi-site estates, where candidates have worked with the same mix of mechanical, electrical, fabric and statutory regimes, and approached engineers who had moved into estates management.
• We screened each candidate against the real demands: Authorised Person experience, building management systems, contractor procurement and performance management, budget control and team leadership, and we tested their willingness to work flexible hours and take part in on-call cover.
• We presented a shortlist with full CVs and interview notes, then managed interviews, references, the DBS requirement and the offer through to acceptance.

The Outcome

Maxwell Stephens made the appointment.

If you are hiring a technical estates or building services manager and need someone who can combine engineering credibility with team leadership, talk to Maxwell Stephens about how we would run the search.