Building manager (12 month FTC)

Closing date: 28th February 2025

Salary: £48,000 - £50,000 dependent on experience (+bonus +benefits)

Contract: This is a fixed-term, 12-month contract.

Location: The role will be based at our London office, Carmelite House. 

Are you an experienced facilities manager with a love of books?

Hachette UK is a creative powerhouse and the UK's second largest book publishing group. Our mission is to make it easy for everyone to discover new worlds of ideas, learning, entertainment and opportunity. We're made up of 11 autonomous publishing divisions and over 60 imprints with a rich and diverse history and an incredible range of authors. We're also the market leader in e-books and publish a range of bestsellers in audio format, the fastest growing part of our business.

Our award-winning adult publishing divisions are Orion, which won Publisher of the Year at the 2021 British Book Awards; Little, Brown; John Murray Press; Hodder & Stoughton; Headline; Quercus; Octopus, and Bookouture. They publish fiction and non-fiction in digital, audio and print format, from the world's best and most diverse authors, including Brit Bennett, Candice Carty-Williams, Martina Cole, Michael Connelly, John Grisham, Stephen King, Stieg Larsson, Nelson Mandela, Stephenie Meyer, Maggie O'Farrell, Delia Owens, Ian Rankin, J.K. Rowling, Colson Whitehead, and Malala Yousafzai. Hachette Children's Group publishes a wide and vibrant range of books for children across all age ranges, while Hachette Learning is a market leader in resources for both primary and secondary schools.

Hachette UK is part of Hachette Livre, the world's third largest trade and educational publisher. As well as our headquarters in Carmelite House, London, and our state-of-the-art book distribution centre in Didcot, Oxfordshire, we have recently opened five new offices in Manchester, Bristol, Sheffield, Newcastle, and Edinburgh. The UK region also includes offices in Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, the Caribbean, and Ireland.

It's an exciting time to join our business because the publishing market continues to grow and thrive. The UK remains the largest exporter of physical books in the world and book adaptations for film and TV are the foundation of the UK's creative industries.

What you'll be doing

• Manage a team of post room staff to provide all post services at Carmelite House and ensure all post and courier providers are regularly reviewed on cost and service levels.
• Manage reception team providing warm, welcoming, and efficient guest services on the Carmelite House reception desk.
• Ensure post room and reception services are operating effectively and available within agreed hours. Manage team rotas, holiday and sickness absence.
• Manage the Facilities Assistant and provide holiday cover for this role.
• Manage the Facilities Mailbox to provide effective and efficient responses to facilities helpdesk requests ensuring they are resolved in a timely and cost-effective way.
• Supported by the Senior Facilities Manager, you will ensure Carmelite House meets all current health and safety obligations and legislation including risk assessments, permits, procedures and training.
• Oversee all events on 6th Story (our venue space) to ensure they are successful and safe, including carrying out risk assessments and ensuring all necessary arrangements are in place.
• Act as Incident Control Manager for the building, supported by the Incident Management Team.
• Oversee outsourced facilities service providers including (but not limited to) cleaning, security guarding and security systems maintenance, fire safety, fabric maintenance, landscaping, pest control, couriers and postal services, ensuring they are meeting agreed SLAs and budget.
• Drafting and updating security Assignment Instructions and Emergency procedures to present to SFM for sign-off and implementation.
• Attending meetings with external facilities service providers, consultants, contractors and statutory bodies.
• Ensure all observations arising from statutory insurance inspections are actioned in a timely manner.
• Undertake move and change projects as required.
• Undertake regular building inspections to identify any health & safety or maintenance issues and ensure high property standards are maintained.
• Maintaining records of compliance using the cloud based system, Meridian.
• Undertake performance reviews, development and training of teams.
• Develop and maintain strong relationships with publishers and external suppliers.
• Develop and maintain strong relationships with building sub-tenants.
• Monitor supplier costs and provide saving proposals where possible.
• Manage energy platforms to ensure energy optimisation across the building.

These are the main requirements of the role, but it is not an exhaustive list of duties. It is intended to reflect the nature, range and context of the work, which will change over time. You may be required to undertake such other duties as may reasonably be expected.

Who we are looking for

• You have strong, current, people management experience with the ability to build, manage and support teams.
• You have a very strong customer focus.
• You have knowledge of facilities-related legislation and its practical application.
• You are happy to frequently work out-of-hours and be available out-of-hours as the role requires.
• You have move and change project skills.
• You remain calm under pressure and manage multiple targets and deadlines.
• You have excellent communication skills.
• You are financially and commercially aware.
• You have good negotiating skills.
• You have significant experience in similar facilities management roles.
• You have experience of building HVAC systems.
• You have project management and CHURN experience.
• You have IWFM, IOSH or equivalent qualifications.

What we offer

Our staff are our greatest asset, and our benefits reflect this:

• 28 annual leave days per year, increases to 29 days after 2 years' service and goes up to 30 days after 5 years' (+ bank holidays)
• Generous pension schemes
• Rent deposit loans
• 2 community days per year
• Summer hours (finishing at 1pm on Fridays during the summer months)
• Retail discounts through Hachette rewards
• Cycle to Work scheme
• Eye care vouchers
• Wide-ranging training library
• Development programmes (including mentoring)
• Up to 70% off book purchases
• A charity bookshelf
• 12 Staff-led employee networks that are voluntary, including Gender Balance, Thrive, Pride, All Together, Wellbeing and religious networks
• Season ticket loans
• And much more!

Our commitment

Hachette employs people on the basis of their abilities. We aim to attract and develop talent from a base as broad as the world of readers we want to reach, with a wide and representative range of age, faith, disability, race, gender, sexuality and socio-economic, regional and cultural backgrounds.

If you are shortlisted and need us to make any adjustments to help you attend for interview, please let us know.

The Book Trade Charity offers financial support to people looking to enter the book trade but who may struggle to afford the costs of attending interviews and undertaking junior roles. For more information visit www.booktradeentrysupport.org

Please state in your application that you found this role through Creative Access.