HQ Theatres & Hospitality Facilities & Buildings Manager, G Live Recruitment

Background

HQ Theatres & Hospitality is one of the UK's leading theatre and entertainment operators, managing an extensive portfolio of theatres, concert venues and cultural destinations across the country. Its venues welcome millions of visitors each year, hosting everything from West End productions and live music to conferences, exhibitions, comedy, corporate events and community performances.

Within that portfolio, G Live in Guildford is one of the South East's leading entertainment and conference venues. With a busy year-round programme and thousands of visitors each week, the venue depends on strong operational management to maintain high standards of safety, presentation and customer experience. To support the continued success of G Live, HQ Theatres & Hospitality partnered with Maxwell Stephens to recruit a Facilities & Buildings Manager.

The Challenge

This was a broad and demanding leadership appointment, requiring an experienced facilities professional able to manage every aspect of the venue's buildings, engineering services, maintenance programmes and operational infrastructure. The successful candidate would be responsible for keeping the venue safe, compliant and operationally reliable while supporting commercial performance and the visitor experience. The role combined technical facilities management with strategic leadership, financial management and customer service.

Key responsibilities included:

• Leading all building operations across the G Live venue.
• Managing planned preventative maintenance (PPM) and reactive maintenance programmes.
• Ensuring full compliance with health & safety and statutory legislation.
• Managing building services, plant, machinery and engineering infrastructure.
• Developing and managing annual operational and maintenance budgets.
• Procuring and managing specialist contractors and service providers.
• Leading capital maintenance and refurbishment projects.
• Supporting business continuity and emergency planning.
• Managing relationships with regulatory bodies and external stakeholders.
• Leading and developing a multidisciplinary operational team, including Technical, Front of House and Maintenance staff.
• Driving operational efficiencies while maintaining customer service standards.

The successful candidate also needed the flexibility to support a seven-day entertainment venue, including evenings, weekends and major live events. Live venues are unforgiving of facilities failures: a plant fault on a show night is visible to a full house, so the role calls for planned maintenance discipline and fast decisions under pressure in equal measure.

Our Approach

Maxwell Stephens worked closely with HQ Theatres & Hospitality to build a detailed understanding of the operational challenges specific to managing a major live entertainment venue. The assignment demanded more than technical competence — it needed a leader able to balance commercial objectives, operational standards and customer experience within a fast-paced public environment.

Using our specialist facilities management recruitment expertise, we ran a targeted executive search focusing on professionals from:

• Entertainment and theatre venues
• Stadia and visitor attractions
• Conference and exhibition centres
• Hospitality
• Commercial property
• Large public venues

Every shortlisted candidate went through a full assessment covering:

• Technical building services knowledge
• Health & safety leadership
• Budget management
• Contractor management
• Capital project delivery
• Leadership capability
• Customer service ethos
• Cultural fit

Our search focused on professionals able to lead high-performing operational teams while maintaining the standards expected of one of the UK's leading entertainment operators.

The Outcome

Following the search, Maxwell Stephens appointed a Facilities & Buildings Manager with extensive experience managing complex public-facing buildings and operational estates. The successful candidate quickly established themselves within the senior management team, providing strong leadership across engineering, maintenance, compliance and operational services. The appointment delivered:

• Reliable building operations. Day-to-day building operations were strengthened, so that the venue continued to operate safely, efficiently and reliably throughout an intensive programme of live events.
• Stronger compliance. Health & safety governance, statutory compliance and maintenance planning were strengthened, keeping the venue in line with regulatory requirements and protecting visitors, performers and employees.
• Disciplined financial management. The successful candidate introduced structured budget management and maintenance planning, helping get the most from the budget while protecting the long-term condition of the estate.
• Improved contractor performance. Supplier relationships were strengthened through better contract management, clearer performance expectations and proactive service monitoring.
• Clear leadership. By providing direction to the Technical, Front of House and Maintenance teams, the new Facilities & Buildings Manager created a collaborative culture focused on operational standards and customer service.
• A well-supported visitor experience. Behind every successful live performance is an efficiently managed venue. Through proactive maintenance, operational planning and continuous improvement, the appointment helped G Live continue to deliver the experience expected by performers, audiences and commercial partners.

The appointment gave HQ Theatres & Hospitality an experienced facilities leader able to manage one of its flagship venues while balancing operational resilience, technical standards and customer experience, and helped G Live continue to operate as one of the South East's leading entertainment venues.

Why This Placement Worked

Customer-facing venues raise the bar for facilities appointments. Technical competence is assumed; what matters is whether a candidate has run a building where the public, performers and commercial partners experience the outcome of their work in real time. Searching across theatres, stadia, visitor attractions and conference centres, rather than corporate FM generally, produced a shortlist that already understood that environment.

If you are recruiting a senior facilities or estates professional for a theatre, venue or other complex customer-facing environment where safety and service quality are critical, Maxwell Stephens can help you define the brief and reach candidates who have done it before. Get in touch with our team.