We are Derwent Students, we are a ‘profit for social purpose' organisation providing affordable student accommodation.
We want you to join the Places for People Group and the 11,000 other colleagues on our journey; colleagues who have helped to build, manage, maintain places that people are proud to call home and stay active in. How do we do all this? We surround ourselves with customer-focused people, attention-to-detail people and positive people. Our people live and breathe our SPIRIT values; we are the place for spirited people.
More about your role
As our General Manager you will have overall responsibility for day-to-day operations of University of Hertfordshire site, with the primary focus on ensuring a safe and secure environment for students and staff who reside or work there. You will provide leadership and vision to our FM team with oversight of the Hard and Soft services. As line manager, you will ensure a progressive service provision through personal development plans and regular 1-to-1s, ensuring objectives are implemented, met and reviewed.
You will work with demanding stakeholders and provide reporting and reassurance to the SPV board, demonstrating where we meet our contractual obligations and provide reassurance on project delivery SLA's.
Health and Safety awareness and statutory compliance is vital across the site. You will be ultimately responsible for safe working practices by internal and external services as well as appropriate PPM attendance. You will ensure the soft services division are adhering to expected methods of work through appropriate training and evolving with better working practices over time.
You will have responsibility for student experience on the residential campus from security, cleaning, and maintenance services and ensure measurable data is captured to support the planning of provision. The successful candidate will be expected to represent the scheme at regular cross-scheme meetings, sharing excellent practices and enabling smarter working through the business.
A full range of duties can be found on the attached job description.
More about you
With responsibility for the overall operation of the site, you will require an excellent understanding of facilities management and the associated legislation and therefore experience of managing hard/soft services team is essential.
Ideally you will have experience of the student accommodation sector and have knowledge of DFM. A comprehensive knowledge of Health & Safety legislation and the enforcement of safe methods of working is essential. You will have experience of managing budgets, which you will be able to demonstrate at interview.
Customer service skills and stakeholder management are key to success in this post. With our client and their customers on site, you will be a key point of contact for them and therefore require excellent verbal and written communication skills. You will work closely with demanding senior stakeholders and experience of a similar environment is required.
The benefits
We are a large diverse and ambitious business, which will give you job security and all the challenge you could wish for. Here people can flourish, thrive, better themselves and work in fantastic communities with inspirational colleagues and customers.
We like to invest in our people; therefore, the successful job holders will have the opportunity to go undergo training within the company including the opportunity to enrol on apprenticeship courses.
- Pension with matched contributions
- Excellent holiday pay and sick pay
- Training
About us
Derwent FM is a subsidiary of Derwent Living. It provides a range of building management and maintenance services across the private and public sectors. It also manages around 12,000 units of student accommodation under the Derwent Students brand and is backed by Places for People Group, one of the largest regeneration, development and property management businesses in the UK.