Background
The Royal Drawing School is a London school and charity dedicated to teaching drawing. It asked Maxwell Stephens to recruit a permanent, full-time Facilities Manager for its Shoreditch building, a five storey converted warehouse shared with other charities.
The post serves staff, students and visitors, and needed to keep the building welcoming, safe and well maintained within the budgets of a charity.
The Challenge
This is a senior, all-round job in a building that combines teaching space, offices and a public gallery. The Facilities Manager procures and manages the supply contracts, runs a risk-based health and safety regime, takes responsibility for security and emergency response, and is the first contact for out-of-hours incidents.
There is a strategic side too: a costed long-term plan for maintenance, upgrade and renewal, advice on insurance, and ownership of budgets reported to more than one charity. The role manages the facilities team and the IT Manager, oversees reception, and prepares the gallery for events.
Charity budgets limit what can be offered, and the person has to be resourceful as well as experienced. The client looked for contract management, tendering and continuity planning, fire safety knowledge, and a collaborative style that works across several organisations. Experience in office and education settings was an advantage.
The building has to switch smoothly between teaching, working and public events, which makes the manager's planning and the reliability of the team around them especially important.
Our Approach
- We spent time with the client on how the building is shared, where the role's authority ended and how much of it was hands-on.
- We searched for facilities managers with experience of cultural, education and charity buildings, as well as small corporate sites, who were used to running a building with a small team.
- We screened for contract and budget management, fire and health and safety knowledge, and the ability to line manage a mixed facilities and IT function.
- We put forward a shortlist with CVs and interview notes, then managed the process through interview and offer to acceptance.
The Outcome
Maxwell Stephens made the appointment.
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