Support Facilities Manager Recruitment for Workspace Group

Background

For more than 30 years, Workspace Group has been one of London's leading commercial property owners, providing flexible office, studio and industrial space to thousands of businesses across the capital. Today the company manages a portfolio exceeding 3.7 million square feet, supporting over 4,000 customers across a diverse collection of commercial properties.

Maxwell Stephens has built a long-standing partnership with Workspace, delivering recruitment assignments across a range of Facilities and Property Management positions. One such appointment was a Support Facilities Manager, a highly operational role providing management cover across Workspace's extensive southern portfolio.

The Challenge

The Support Facilities Manager holds a pivotal position within the Facilities Management team, keeping operations running whenever permanent Building or Facilities Managers are unavailable.

The successful candidate needed to step into multiple locations at short notice and establish themselves quickly as the operational lead, while holding Workspace's standards of customer service and building performance steady.

Key responsibilities included:

• Providing management cover across the southern property portfolio.
• Leading day-to-day Building and Facilities Management operations.
• Managing planned and reactive maintenance programmes.
• Coordinating contractors and service providers.
• Acting as the primary point of contact for customers and occupiers.
• Overseeing cleaning, security, waste management and building services.
• Monitoring Health & Safety compliance.
• Reviewing service charge budgets and expenditure.
• Supporting Centre Managers with operational improvements.
• Maintaining customer experience across multiple sites.

Unlike a single-site Facilities Manager, this role demanded exceptional adaptability, with assignments often arising at very short notice across different properties throughout London.

That is a specific and uncommon profile. Most Facilities Managers build their effectiveness on knowing one building and the people in it — where the isolation valves are, which contractor turns up, which occupier calls about everything. A cover role strips all of that away and asks for the same standard from day one, which suits a particular temperament and frustrates others.

Our Approach

Having supported Workspace on a number of recruitment campaigns, we understood both the organisation's culture and the demands of this position.

We ran a targeted search focused on Facilities professionals with proven experience managing commercial office environments and the flexibility to operate across multiple locations, prioritising candidates who demonstrated:

• Commercial Building Management experience.
• Strong customer service and stakeholder management skills.
• Contractor and supplier management expertise.
• Health & Safety knowledge and compliance experience.
• Budget and service charge awareness.
• CAFM systems experience.
• Strong organisational and planning skills.
• The confidence to integrate quickly into different operational teams.

Given the varied nature of the role, particular emphasis was placed on identifying people who were adaptable, self-motivated and able to make an immediate impact in unfamiliar environments.

Professional qualifications such as IOSH Managing Safely, NEBOSH and relevant Facilities Management certifications were also considered throughout the selection process. In a cover role they carry particular weight: someone arriving at a building they do not know needs a reliable internal framework for judging risk before they have had time to learn the site.

The Outcome

Following a comprehensive search and assessment process, Maxwell Stephens placed an experienced Support Facilities Manager with both the technical expertise and the operational flexibility the role required.

The successful candidate quickly became a trusted member of the Workspace Facilities team, providing operational leadership across multiple locations and continuity of service whenever management cover was needed.

The role covered facilities standards across a large number of sites, relationships with customers, contractors and Centre Managers, planned and reactive maintenance, and contractor performance.

Candidate Testimonial

"Working with Maxwell Stephens was an excellent experience from start to finish. They invested real time in understanding what I was looking for and provided outstanding support throughout the recruitment process. I always had the information I needed before interviews, and they continued to stay in touch even after I accepted the role to ensure everything was going well. Their professionalism and genuine care made a real difference, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them."

Why This Placement Worked

Recruiting someone to operate across multiple commercial properties takes more than technical expertise — it takes adaptability, strong communication and a genuine focus on the customer. Workspace's occupiers are customers rather than tenants in the traditional sense, and a manager covering their building for a fortnight is still the person they judge the landlord by.

Defining the search around that reality, rather than around a standard Facilities Manager specification, is what produced a shortlist of people who could do the job as it actually operates.

If you are recruiting Facilities or Building Management cover across a commercial portfolio, Maxwell Stephens can help you shape the brief and reach candidates who work well without a fixed site. Get in touch with our team.