Healthcare Estates Appointments for Brookfield Multiplex

About Brookfield Multiplex

Brookfield Multiplex is a globally recognised construction and development organisation with a track record of delivering large-scale, complex projects across healthcare, commercial, infrastructure and public sector environments.

Peterborough City Hospital is one of the region's most significant healthcare facilities. The estate comprises a 600-bed acute hospital, a mental health unit and a city-centre care unit, operating under a 30-year design, build and operate PFI contract. Brookfield Multiplex was involved in the development and operational transition of the hospital, and Brookfield Multiplex Services Europe (BMSE) is the FM service provider on the contract.

Our work with Brookfield Multiplex

Maxwell Stephens has made two senior appointments at Peterborough City Hospital:

• Estate Manager for Brookfield Multiplex, leading compliance, day-to-day operation and long-term asset performance.
• Senior Operational Manager for BMSE, leading the 24/7 operational and engineering team on the PFI contract.

Estate Manager

Brookfield Multiplex asked Maxwell Stephens to recruit an experienced Estate Manager to oversee the hospital estate and take responsibility for its compliance, day-to-day operation and long-term asset performance. The remit covered estates and facilities management, PPM and reactive maintenance, health, safety and statutory compliance, contractor and supplier management, asset and lifecycle planning, hard and soft services, operational risk, budgets and cost control, sustainability and energy, and strategic estate planning.

Three factors set this apart from a conventional estates appointment:

• A live healthcare environment. Maintenance windows are narrow, plant failures have clinical consequences and statutory compliance is scrutinised more closely than in almost any other sector.
• A developer-side brief. The Estate Manager had to bridge construction handover and steady-state operation, so needed to be comfortable with defects and lifecycle planning, not only with running an established estate.
• A wide stakeholder map. Contractors, clinical stakeholders, service providers and senior leadership teams each had different priorities.

We ran a targeted search across our Facilities Management and Estates network, weighting healthcare estates experience heavily because the compliance regime and operational tempo of a hospital are difficult to learn from a standing start. Candidates were assessed on estates and FM expertise, compliance and risk management, maintenance and asset management, contractor management and procurement, budget control, stakeholder engagement and strategic planning.

We placed an Estate Manager with a strong background in facilities management, operational leadership and estate performance, including knowledge of healthcare and regulated environments. Following their appointment they took responsibility for estate operations, supporting asset performance and the continued delivery of safe, compliant and efficient facilities services across the hospital.

Senior Operational Manager, BMSE

For BMSE, the brief was to lead a 24/7 operational environment, hold stringent service and compliance standards, manage engineering resources and work with stakeholders across the Trust, the SPV and BMSE. The PFI structure adds a further layer: the operational manager answers not only to the service provider's own objectives but to contractual obligations owed to the SPV and, through it, to the Trust.

The role needed someone who could direct the operational management team against SLAs and KPIs, get the best from an in-house engineering workforce while using subcontracted services where they represented value, contribute at senior management meetings with the Trust and SPV, and carry technical credibility on electrical infrastructure, high-voltage systems, gas and combustion, emergency lighting and electrical inspection. Candidates with the operational leadership are relatively common. Those who also have the technical depth to be credible with engineers and the commercial awareness to run a PFI contract are not.

In post, the Senior Operational Manager we placed:

• led the operational management team to deliver against business, contractual and customer objectives within agreed SLAs and KPIs
• optimised the in-house workforce to strengthen 24/7 engineering capability, and provided direction during major service interruptions and incidents
• reviewed management performance, budgets and operational results with the Trust, the SPV and BMSE, and implemented corrective action where KPI or SLA performance needed to improve
• supported the delivery of major and minor works and took a leading role in managing the electrical infrastructure
• designed and implemented a new IT-based planned preventive maintenance system to replace paper-based processes
• introduced structured auditing and improved communication between operational management and engineering teams
• completed High Voltage Authorised Person training, strengthened gas and combustion compliance procedures, and improved emergency lighting maintenance and electrical inspection processes
• formulated an energy-conservation policy for the estate

The result was better operational control, a more structured and transparent approach to maintenance, stronger compliance and closer coordination between BMSE, the Trust, the SPV and the operational teams.

Why it worked

Senior estates and operational roles on hospital sites fail most often when the appointee has strong general FM credentials but no experience of the healthcare compliance regime, or depends entirely on engineers for technical judgement. The Estate Manager search treated healthcare and regulated-environment experience as a requirement rather than a preference. The Senior Operational Manager appointment worked because it combined operational leadership, technical expertise, commercial awareness and stakeholder management in one person, which is what a 24/7 acute estate run under a long-term PFI structure demands.

If you are recruiting an estates lead or senior FM professional for a healthcare, PFI or other regulated environment, get in touch with our team.