Background
Prezzo, a well-known restaurant chain, engaged Maxwell Stephens to fill the position of Regional Facilities Manager. The role called for someone capable of managing maintenance operations, ensuring compliance and leading innovation across Prezzo's large estate, and our task was to find a candidate who could fit into Prezzo's working environment quickly and uphold its standards.
The Challenge
Restaurant estates are among the harder multi-site environments to maintain. Kitchens run plant hard, trading hours leave narrow windows for work, and a fault that closes a site costs revenue by the hour. The Regional Facilities Manager role reflected that, spanning a wide range of responsibilities:
- Maintenance management. Managing day-to-day maintenance issues within a specified region and assisting with maintenance across the entire Prezzo estate, with minimal disruption to trading.
- Stakeholder collaboration. Working closely with General Managers, Operations Managers and Operations Directors in line with Prezzo's "one team" ethic, which demanded strong communication and relationship-building skills.
- Quality control and compliance. Overseeing contractors, managing the workload of mobile Prezzo Service Technicians, and ensuring Health & Safety and compliance across the estate, including annual building condition surveys and asset capture.
- Innovation and improvement. Identifying opportunities to improve service delivery, and exploring and implementing new initiatives and technologies to strengthen the property team's support for the business.
- Project management. Helping to identify and manage competent contractors for planned and ad-hoc projects, which called for strong organisational and project management skills.
Individually, none of these is unusual. Together they describe a role that is part engineer, part contract manager and part operational partner, and candidates who are strong on the technical side are not always comfortable in the relationship-driven, restaurant-floor culture the job requires.
Our Approach
Maxwell Stephens ran an extensive search followed by a thorough vetting process. Because the brief weighted collaboration and innovation as heavily as maintenance competence, we looked beyond CVs that simply listed multi-site experience and tested for the things that determine success in a role like this:
- Multi-site maintenance credibility. Evidence of managing reactive and planned maintenance across a dispersed estate, including the supervision of contractors and in-house technicians.
- Compliance discipline. A working grasp of Health & Safety and statutory compliance, and of the surveys and asset data that underpin it.
- Operational fit. The ability to work as one team with restaurant and operations management rather than as a remote property function.
- Appetite for improvement. A record of bringing new initiatives or technologies into a maintenance operation, not just running the existing one.
The Outcome
We placed a Regional Facilities Manager at Prezzo whose impact has been felt across each area of the brief:
- Maintenance management. The new Regional Facilities Manager has overseen day-to-day maintenance issues within their region effectively, reducing downtime and restoring restaurant operations quickly when problems occur.
- Stakeholder relationships. By building strong working relationships with operational team members and adhering to the "one team" ethic, they have improved collaboration and communication across the business, contributing to smoother operations.
- Quality control and compliance. They have introduced rigorous quality assessments for contractors and mobile service technicians, maintaining high standards of maintenance and compliance, and their proactive approach to Health & Safety has reinforced a culture of compliance across the estate.
- Innovation. They have identified and implemented several new initiatives and technologies, leading to better service delivery and operational efficiencies, and continue to drive progress within Prezzo's facilities management team.
- Project management. They have overseen planned and ad-hoc projects efficiently, ensuring they are completed to a high standard.
Why This Placement Worked
Regional facilities roles in hospitality are often filled on maintenance credentials alone. Prezzo's brief made clear that the person also had to operate as a partner to restaurant and operations management and to keep improving the service, so the search was run against all three requirements from the outset. The result was an appointment that fitted the role as it is actually performed, not just as it reads on paper.
If you are recruiting a regional or multi-site facilities role across a hospitality, retail or leisure estate, Maxwell Stephens can help you define the brief and reach candidates with the right mix of technical and operational skills. Get in touch with our team.