In-house facilities managers often bemoan the fact employers don’t appreciate the contribution made by facilities management, because FM sits outside the organisation’s core activities. This doesn’t apply to Denise Kelly. She’s head of facilities and building management for a leading real estate company, Hammerson plc, which invests in and develops shopping centres, retail parks and prime offices and is behind major projects such as the Bullring centre in Birmingham, and Bishops Square, Spitalfields, London. In fact, when Kelly was recruited in 2005, it was to facilitate the firm’s high-profile head office move from a Grade II listed building in Park Lane, London, to new purpose-built offices nearby.
Sitting in Hammerson’s impressive new offices at 10 Grosvenor Street, Kelly recalls: ‘The main crux of the job was to move Hammerson from where they’d been for 40 years, to this building, which was a huge job but an interesting one. I joined the company in October and had nine months to be part of the project management team, working with the architect at quite an early stage and getting involved with the building design and set up.’
It was quite an undertaking but a successful one. Hammerson ended up with showcase new offices and the company was operational from day one of the move in June 2006.
Although Kelly admits she hadn’t overseen such a massive office move prior to the Hammerson project, her previous experiences in FM and building management have more than equipped her for this crucial role.
She began her career in 1990 as an estates assistant collecting and reconciling commercial rents and dealing with tenant queries for the City Parochial Foundation, which gives grants to the poor of London. Because the foundation had recently moved to new offices her role was expanded to manage the facilities, including overseeing health and safety, reporting air-conditioning faults, and dealing with contractors and tenants.
Says Kelly: ‘It was a good introduction to all the services within FM, while working for a landlord ensured I was well versed in the landlord/tenant role.’ Determined to understand the theory behind the FM discipline, she also began studying for the BIFM diplomas Part 1 and 2 in administrative management and has gained NEBOSH health and safety qualifications.
‘FM is very broad in scope and application. To be taken seriously, I think you do need to be qualified,’ she argues. ‘When I’m recruiting facilities people I want to see FMs that are passionate about buildings and understand the difference between delivery of service and end-user experience.’
After five years at the foundation and looking to take her career forward, she was one of two successful applicants out of over a thousand to become operations manager for the BBC’s World Service (BBC WS) at the famous Bush House, providing a 24-hour service on a rotational shift pattern.
‘I did 12-hour shift work for three and a half years,’ recalls Kelly. ‘Shift work is hard both physically and mentally and particularly with broadcasting, as it’s in real time with two and a half thousand people there during the day, and over 500 at night. It’s a true 24-hour operation.’
In practice this meant that the FM service is very different from most nine-to-five businesses, where people can be moved around, offices emptied during a fire drill and so on. At the BBC WS, a fire evacuation could mean interrupting a broadcast and you simply can’t just move staff out of an area to carry out routine maintenance. However, although Kelly says that ‘broadcasting came first’ at the BBC, during her time there the far-seeing management sponsored her to do an MSc in architecture from UCL, where she focused on facility and environmental management.
‘The job gave me such a broad experience of people management, incident management, health and safety and running a 24-hour operation for half a million square feet,’ she says. ‘Facilities management there was very much established and ahead of its time in comparison to other businesses, as there was much focus on establishing service level agreements and key performance indicators – and they were miles ahead in satisfying the Disability Discrimination Act.’
Following her promotion to facilities and premises manager in 1998, Kelly was responsible for advising clients on all aspects of FM and helping to organise office moves and space planning. In 2000, however, and ready for another challenge, she joined Broadgate Estates as a building manager, later being promoted to property manager, becoming responsible for over 37,000 sq m of multi-let commercial buildings. Explains Kelly: ‘I wanted a dedicated building to manage and to hone my skills.
FM is very much how an organisation delivers and sustains support services in a quality environment to meet strategic needs, and this becomes more obvious in changing conditions. With building management you’re working on behalf of the landlord managing the assets and fabric of the building. There is more focus on the building itself and maintenance of it.
‘However,’ she continues, ‘both disciplines involve day-to-day operational management and understanding customer needs and how these needs impact on the business process. The reality being that customers expect and demand a service more responsive to their needs. When you manage facilities, you are concerned with the finite detail of service delivery, and with BM it’s very much on function.’
Hammerson move
After five and a half years she left Broadgate Estates to move back into FM, where her first major task was to organise the head office move for Hammerson. Although the beautiful head office building in Park Lane was regal and imposing, it was very impractical for a thriving business. The move was designed to give the company the chance to enhance the working conditions and opportunities for team interaction as well as impress clients and visitors to a property management firm.
It was decided to design all of the office as open plan, with bench-style desking supplied by Dovetail to encourage collaborative and flexible working styles. Kelly and the project team worked with architects Stiff & Trevillion to help create a signature head office, which has the feel of an upmarket hotel and restaurant – achieved through the use of subtle lighting and a spatial design. But, as Kelly explains, enhancing the space didn’t end with the move.
‘We continue to make changes and develop our support services here, and we’ve got some big office moves this year which will enhance the space and working environment even further.’
Aside from overseeing ongoing space-changing projects, and managing the facilities functions including all the services, the contracts and enhancing the service delivery, Kelly’s other role is as building manager for the tenants based at 10 Grosvenor Street.
‘I see myself as both a building services manager and a facilities manager,’ she says, ‘and I’m using my FM skills from the BBC and studies plus my building management skills from five years at Broadgate Estates.
‘In this building I have the unique opportunity to wear both hats and have to maintain an unbiased approach to the services. With the contract management side, I write the majority of the specs here and am responsible for all the tendering. We have two sets of contracts for both tenants and Hammerson’s demise and in some services use the same contractors, but with different scope of works reflecting the different teams and more importantly different budgets.’
Kelly doesn’t think her level of expertise would be possible without the benefit of training and third-level education and she augments her knowledge base by fitting in site visits to other companies to see how they do things.
‘Looking behind the scenes is an invaluable experience,’ she says, ‘particularly if it is a very different operation, such as a football stadium, as you can learn so much about other ways of fulfilling service expectations.’
She’s also enthusiastic about furthering the facilities management role within the wider business sphere. To achieve this, she argues, those at board level need to understand the benefits good facilities management can bring to their organisation.
‘With buildings being managed more effectively FM is being seen more as a strategic function. It’s such a cliché when FMs say what they love about the job is that “every day is different.” I’d say that FM shouldn’t be such a reactive role, but the ability to be one step ahead of your customer, knowing and understanding their business and predicting in advance the outcome of any changes you have made. Communication is crucial and keeping everyone informed can make the worst scenario very manageable.
‘Facilities managers will need to embrace further the management of the lifecycle costing of buildings, environmental and sustainable issues,’ she continues. ‘Cost versus adding value has always been on the agenda, but is certain to become even more prominent in today’s market.’
Working at Hammerson she’s arguably got the best of both worlds: working in-house but for a property company, and as head of FM while also ensuring the needs of her building management clients.
This article was first published in FMX Magazine
