Background
Groundwork London is an environmental and community charity working to create stronger, healthier and more sustainable communities. It operates across multiple locations and delivers a wide range of projects, so its workplace and facilities operations need to run reliably to support staff, stakeholders and community programmes.
To support its growing operational requirements, the charity asked Maxwell Stephens to recruit a Facilities Support Officer — someone who could provide facilities and administrative support across the estate while helping to maintain standards of compliance, service delivery and operational performance.
The Challenge
The Facilities Support Officer would play a central role in the day-to-day management of facilities services across multiple sites. Groundwork London needed a highly organised and adaptable individual who could balance operational responsibilities with administrative support while keeping facilities services safe, compliant and effective.
Key areas of responsibility included:
- Supporting facilities operations across multiple office locations
- Coordinating planned and reactive facilities activities
- Managing contractor access, performance and compliance
- Supporting procurement and financial administration processes
- Monitoring health, safety and environmental compliance
- Conducting workplace inspections and facilities audits
- Managing incident reporting and compliance records
- Supporting waste management, recycling and sustainability initiatives
- Assisting with business continuity and operational resilience activities
That is a broad remit for a support-level post, and it is what makes roles of this kind harder to fill than the title suggests. In a geographically dispersed organisation, the person in this seat is often the one keeping contractors, records and colleagues aligned across sites, and there is rarely someone senior on hand at every location to pick up what gets missed. The successful candidate therefore needed strong organisational skills, close attention to detail and the ability to respond to changing priorities in a busy, multi-site environment.
Our Approach
Understanding the Requirement
Maxwell Stephens worked closely with Groundwork London to build a detailed understanding of the operational demands of the role and the skills needed to support a complex multi-site estate. Beyond the task list, the organisation needed someone who could maintain strong working relationships with contractors, colleagues and stakeholders across multiple locations — a large part of the job in any dispersed estate.
Targeted Search
Drawing on our specialist facilities management network, we ran a targeted search focused on candidates with experience in:
- Facilities administration and workplace support services
- Multi-site operational environments
- Contractor management
- Health and safety compliance
- Financial administration and purchase order management
- Environmental and sustainability initiatives
- Customer-focused service delivery
We placed particular emphasis on candidates who could show a proactive approach, strong organisational capability and the flexibility to support a busy operational environment.
Candidate Assessment
Candidates were assessed against a range of technical and behavioural competencies: facilities and workplace support experience, contractor coordination and supplier management, health, safety and compliance knowledge, administrative and financial process management, communication and stakeholder engagement, problem-solving and organisational skills, and a commitment to sustainability and continuous improvement.
The aim was to ensure that every shortlisted candidate had both the technical capability and the cultural fit to succeed in a values-driven charity. In the third sector that second test matters as much as the first: facilities staff work most effectively when they understand and share the organisation's purpose.
The Outcome
Maxwell Stephens appointed an experienced Facilities Support Officer who quickly became an integral part of Groundwork London's facilities function. The successful candidate brought a strong combination of facilities administration, compliance management and operational support experience, and made an immediate positive impact across the organisation's estate.
Key results included:
- Better coordination of facilities operations across multiple office locations, with more consistent service delivery between sites.
- Stronger contractor oversight, improving service delivery performance and compliance monitoring.
- Improved health and safety compliance, supported by regular audits, inspections and monitoring.
- Better management of facilities records, documentation and reporting, with greater accuracy and efficiency in facilities administration.
- More efficient processing of purchase orders and financial administration, supporting budgetary control and procurement.
- Greater support for environmental management, sustainability initiatives and sustainable workplace practices.
The appointment strengthened operational consistency across Groundwork London's sites and helped ensure that facilities services continued to support the organisation's wider mission and community objectives. It also brought in a facilities professional aligned with the organisation's culture and values, not just its task list.
Why This Placement Worked
Support-level facilities roles in multi-site organisations are frequently under-specified. They are advertised as administrative posts, and the operational reach of the job — contractors, compliance, audits, continuity planning — only becomes clear once someone is in it. Groundwork London had set out the full remit clearly, and we searched and assessed against the whole of it rather than the administrative half.
Maxwell Stephens supports organisations across the charitable, public, corporate and commercial sectors with specialist facilities management recruitment, from facilities support and coordination through to workplace services, health and safety, contractor management and estates operations. If you are recruiting a facilities support or coordination role across a dispersed estate, get in touch with our team.