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A 8 www.telegraph.co.uk/job Thursday, October 23, 2008 THE DAILY TELEGRAPH CAREERS IN FACILITIES MANAGEMENT PEOPLE ACTION PLUS WINNING ROYAL ASCOT IS ONE OF THE MOST HOTLY ANTICIPATED EVENTS ON BOTH THE SOCIAL AND SPORTING CALENDAR. ESME McAVOY MEETS THE MAN WHO HAS ENSURED ITS SMOOTH RUNNING FOR THE PAST 24 YEARS SOLUTIONS ‘‘ T he grandest race meeting in the world, as famous for its hats as for its horses, Royal Ascot has become one of the most prestigious fixtures in the British society calendar. John Potts has been Ascot’s facilities manager for the past 24 years, and in June he ensured a warm welcome for more than 300,000 racegoers at Ascot week. “This summer was another spectacular year,” he says. “It’s always hard work, but I love the buzz of getting everything ready and seeing everyone enjoying themselves. “As soon as the five-day event is over, we start planning the following year’s. Building starts in earnest from early May to get all the temporary structures in place. I’m also responsible for the site’s overall presentation — from the flowers and cleaning, to ensuring the grounds and facilities are impeccable.” In grounds where regulations cover even the blade length of the grass — four inches for flat racing, five inches for jump racing — that’s no mean feat. Many of the facilities are erected especially for Royal Ascot. The tented Royal Ascot Village can accommodate 1,400 guests, while the impressive three-tiered Paddock Marquee, complete with fully functioning lifts, houses The Carriages Restaurant and Bessborough Suite, and caters for more than 1,000 guests per day. “The Paddock Marquee is imported from Holland and takes more than six weeks to build. Its roof has been designed to mimic the roof of the new Grandstand so that it is in keeping with the rest of the racecourse.” The annual Royal Meeting in June was extended to five consecutive days in 2002, to mark the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, and has stayed that way ever since, meaning a long week for staff — and 5.30am starts for Potts. “From the Sunday morning before Royal Ascot, we have cleaning crews working 24-hours a day for seven days to ensure that those who visit on day five enjoy grounds in the same pristine condition as those visiting on day one. We have 6,000 staff on the site each day. Managing their welfare and facilities — providing separate toilets, rest areas and food — is a massive undertaking. “My day starts early with a walkround of the site with cleaning managers and again with the events manager, making sure the gates and signage are right and ensuring the site is perfect in time for the gates to open at 10.30am.” Running the facilities helpdesk is a mammoth task because it can expect more than 200 radio calls a day from staff reporting anything from a broken door to a problem stemming from a broken stiletto. “We’ve had to dislodge hats stuck up trees — you’d be surprised by some of the calls we get.” Or perhaps not, given that this year’s guests guzzled a total of 60,000 bottles of champagne and more than 8,000 gallons of Pimm’s. With the Royal Family in attendance for all five days of ‘‘ The minute the Queen arrives on site, the Union Jack flag must be changed to the Royal Standard racing — arriving by horse-drawn carriage — regimented timekeeping is critical. “I’m there when the Queen arrives each day. The minute she is on site, staff on the grandstand roof must change the Union Jack flag to the Royal Standard to mark her presence and the military bands must leave the ring so the Royal horses can enter. It’s the great attention to detail and tradition that makes it all so special. “On those five important days we can be working until gone 11pm, having post-race management meetings to ensure everything is prepared and refreshed for the next day.” JOBS ONLINE: jobs.telegraph.co.uk/ careers-insider @ The race is on: preparations for the following year start right after Royal Ascot week ends to ensure the event is a success with both visitors and participants alike Grand venue: the tented Royal Ascot Village, which accommodates 1,400 guests AMUNDSEN-SCOTT SOUTHPOLE STATION flights, and With no sun, no no way in or out during an Antarctic winter, servicing the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station means not only ensuring that the residents have all manner of creature comforts, but also that they stay alive. That’s why Jerry Marty, National Science Foundation representative for South Pole Station, plans everything, down to the last detail, a year in advance, with an outline plan covering four years. “The supply ship goes once a year,” says Marty. “It leaves from the west coast of California in midDecember and arrives at McMurdo Station in early February. Throughout the following year, those materials are loaded up and flown 847 miles to the South Pole. The window of time for flights is only 110 days.” All this is necessary to service a scientific station that also has to function as a hotel, a hospital, an airport, a fuel-storage centre, power generator and, until January earlier this year, a construction zone for the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station itself. With each payload costing £26,000 to transport, it also means accounting for up to £9m worth of food and materials. “When we depart the station on February 15th, leaving behind 60 people to spend the winter there, we have to be assured they have the necessary supplies to support them. If we get it wrong, they have got no other place to go. It’s not just a question of getting the materials, but making sure they are the right ones, the right size and in the right quantity.” FAR ANDAWAY housekeeping and laundry. On smaller oil rigs the facilities manager is often a lot more hands-on and even does some of the cooking. Paul Murray, Sodexo unit manager on Seadrill’s West Navigator rig, believes being a good people manager is key to his job. “When you’re miles from home working 12-hour shifts, how people get on with each other is crucial. There is no escape. It’s not like working onshore where, if you don’t like someone, come four, five o’clock you can go home. Any issues have to be resolved, otherwise it can affect offshore life.” ALAMY ONSHORE REMOTE At the BP Sullom Voe oil terminal Wave power: national flags outside the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station HOW DO YOU RUN OPERATIONS THAT ARE HUNDREDS OF MILES AWAY FROM LAND, OR THE NEAREST HUMAN HABITATION? NATASHA MANN GETS THE LOWDOWN FROM THE SPECIALISTS ensuring a good supply chain. Edible, wholesome food is crucial and sometimes that means freighting it huge distances. Norman Hutton, currently Sodexo Brae Field co-ordinator for three platforms, remembers water being transported from Ireland while he was working in West Africa. Another memorably remote location was Kazakhstan, where food supplies were driven from Aberdeen in a lorry convoy along with an armed guard for certain parts of the journey. Now in the North Sea, the weather presents one of Hutton’s biggest challenges. “Our supplies come by boat, but when the sea is rough and there are high winds it can’t always get to us. Fresh fruit and milk can run out, but we have in the Shetlands, Colin Williamson’s responsibilities range from providing meals 24 hours a day to the smooth running of a fleet of vehicles across the 1,000-acre site. “When things go wrong it comes back to me and my co-manager,” says Williamson, a Sodexo facilities manager, who, along with his co-manager, provides a much fuller range of services. “We do everything, from catering, to looking after pumps, vehicles, cranes and cleaning the buildings which are occupied. There are team leaders for each section, and our specialists.” However, while running out of milk doesn’t pose quite such a conundrum as it does offshore — there is a town located 35 miles away — the remoteness still means it is necessary to plan way in advance, and account for the expense of having things shipped to the Shetlands. HOT PROPERTY MILLIONS OF PEOPLE VISIT BRITAIN’S NATIONAL TRUST ATTRACTIONS EVERY YEAR AND, WITH NUMBERS ON THE RISE, EASY ACCESS IS VITAL, SAYS ESME McAVOY F OIL PLATFORM Keeping domestic arrangements ticking over on an oil platform is “a bit like running a hotel offshore”, according to Stuart MacBride, chairman and CEO of Trinity International Services. “The demands are exactly the same in the middle of the North Sea as they are in a London hotel,” says MacBride, whose facilities management work included the Bonga platform, 75 miles off the Nigerian coast which accommodates 1,000 people. “The problem we have is that there isn’t a little shop around the corner, butcher or a wholesaler. So we can’t afford to run short of anything.” Being well stocked means ‘‘ ‘‘ We’ve been asked to provide everything from vaccinations to snake-catchers and always done it OIL RIG for facilities managers Challenges big freezers and cupboards, and we keep a minimum of 14 days’ supply of frozen and tinned food. “We’ve operated in almost every part of the world and everywhere you go, the legislation is different; the tax regimes, employment law and, most importantly, the availability of foodstuffs,” says MacBride. “But we love the challenge. We’ve been asked to provide everything from vaccinations to snake-catchers — and we’ve always done it.” OFFSHORE WIND TURBINES of wind Remote management in the drilling sector are pretty similar to those experienced while working on platforms, but the services provided on rigs are usually confined to catering, farms is an altogether different form of facilities management. Ian Hatton is CEO of Eclipse Energy, which is developing an offshore wind farm and two small gas fields in the Irish Sea. These wind turbines will be controlled from a centre in Barrow, Scotland, and monitored for performance by the manufacturers in Germany — all with the aid of fibre optic cables laid down in the sea. “Anything you can measure over a wire these days, because of internet technology, you can control anywhere on the face of the Earth,” says Hatton. “It’s all done with web-browser technology.” And if something does go wrong you can — when conditions are more clement — send someone out to fix it. ounded over a century ago, the National Trust has managed to strike a balance between caring for its historic properties and meeting the demands of modern visitors. More than 12 million paid visits were made to the Trust’s historic properties last year while an estimated 50 million visits were clocked up at its open-air sites. Increasing visitor numbers are good news but do create pressure. “We constantly look at ways to improve public access and facilities to ensure our visitors Above, Dunham Massey; top, Hardwick Hall enjoy a good day out, while Managing visitor flow within balancing that against the fact we properties is important, too. “We are a historic house with listed assess the carrying capacity for building status,” says Roz Stone, visitor and commercial operations each property for the safety of its manager at the Georgian mansion physical fabric, but also for ensuring a good visitor Dunham Massey in Cheshire, set experience,” says Katy Lithgow, in a 250-acre deer park. head conservator for the Trust. In “An unexpectedly sunny day practice, this can mean timed can see us swamped with tickets for popular properties and spontaneous visitors and our car clear guided routes for visitors. park at capacity by 11am,” says Each property’s open season Stone. Grassy banks are used for and hours are different, reflecting overflow parking, but heavy rain the Trust’s wide portfolio, ranging can render them no-go areas. “Frustrated visitors stuck in traffic from castles and mansions to mills and townhouses. Many are closed queues outside the grounds want to know why we don’t increase our to the public in winter to allow for maintenance, meticulous cleaning car parking, but we have to think and inspections of every item in a carefully before simply covering collection. However, there is a our green spaces with Tarmac.” move to year-round opening. “We’re increasing opening opportunities at some sites, staying open for more of the winter with houses dressed for Christmas,” says Lithgow. Attracting more visitors is vital for the Trust’s survival and many properties now run seasonal events, from banquets and Easter egg hunts to Victorian-themed school visits and Hallowe’en ghost tours. But the fun hasn’t meant conservators are relaxing the rules — far from it. Environmental conditions are rigorously controlled to slow the ageing of each building and its interiors. “The emphasis is on preventive conservation — preventing damage and decay based on scientific research,” says Lithgow. A good day out for visitors at a National Trust property is often disarmingly simple. “‘A view, a loo and a brew’ is what matters for the vast majority of our visitors,” says Stone. “Providing the best we can, on all three counts, means maintaining the beauty and integrity of a property while providing thoughtful, environmentally conscious facilities.” @ JOBS ONLINE: jobs.telegraph.co.uk/ careers-insider THE DAILY TELEGRAPH Smooth operators WHAT IT TAKES TO KEEP BIG BUSINESS WORKING page 6 Go East PAVING THE WAY FOR GLOBAL CONSTRUCTION TEAMS page 7 Racing certainty HOW CAREFUL PLANNING MAKES ROYAL ASCOT A WINNER page 8 ALL ILLUSTRATIONS BY ADAM SIMPSON AT HEART Facilities management CAREERS IN A 6 www.telegraph.co.uk/job Thursday, October 23, 2008 THE DAILY TELEGRAPH CAREERS IN FACILITIES MANAGEMENT OVERVIEW SUPPORT SYSTEMS WORK, REST AND PLAY, THEY AIM TO PROP UP MANY AREAS OF OUR LIVES. THEA JOURDAN CHAMPIONS THE MULTI-TALENTED MODERN FACILITIES MANAGER F @ ALAMY ‘‘ acilit THE DAILY TELEGRAPH Thursday, October 23, 2008 www.telegraph.co.uk/job A 7 GRADUATES CAREERS IN FACILITIES MANAGEMENT THE TRAINING ACADEMIES THAT HELP YOU REACH YOUR GOAL Here’s our at-a-glance guide to the companies that run training academies for graduates who want to develop core business s A 8 www.telegraph.co.uk/job Thursday, October 23, 2008 THE DAILY TELEGRAPH CAREERS IN FACILITIES MANAGEMENT PEOPLE ACTION PLUS WINNING ROYAL ASCOT IS ONE OF THE MOST HOTLY ANTICIPATED EVENTS ON BOTH THE SOCIAL AND SPORTING CALENDAR. ESME McAVOY MEETS THE MAN WHO HAS ENSURED ITS SMOOTH RUNNING F