“FM wasn’t really some big plan; it just sort of happened. I was about 30 when I came into it. I sort of fell into it by accident, really. I was working in retail and wanted a bit more of a career. A friend mentioned an admin role on a facilities management contract with the Met Police, so I gave it a go and never looked back. I started out doing scanning work, then moved into commercial administration, then PM scheduling, and it grew from there. 

I always laugh when people ask me what I do. How do you explain it to someone outside the industry? 

Okay, the simple version: we look after buildings. If things break, we fix them. If things haven’t broken yet, we maintain them so they don’t. 

The reality is a lot broader than that. No two days are the same, and I think that variety keeps you engaged. One day, you might be doing monthly reporting and contract admin, the next, you’re dealing with a power failure at a care home. There’s definitely satisfaction in resolving problems as well. Things will always go wrong, boilers break, power goes down, equipment fails, the key is how you respond to it and how quickly you can put things right. I enjoy the pace of it.  

A lot of the role is relationships as well. Managing the client relationship, supporting the engineering teams, working with helpdesk teams, contractors and residents. I’ve been on this contract for over five years now, and you get to know people properly, and there’s a lot of trust. This job feels connected, and there’s definitely a family atmosphere here.  

Open, honest communication and relationship building are massive parts of the job, and I think I’m naturally quite easy to get on with. A lot of it is coordination and problem solving, making sure the right people are doing the right things at the right time and the client feels supported throughout. 

The contract I work on, in particular, is quite unique. The care environment changes everything. 

In the Royal British Legion contract, we support care homes, offices, the National Memorial Arboretum and other specialist sites, so there’s quite a broad range of environments and priorities to manage. It’s more than maintaining buildings. There are real people relying on those places every single day. 

The impact of service issues is much more personal and immediate in a care setting than in many other sectors, so response times, communication and reliability become even more vital. 

There’s also a real sense of pride working with an organisation like the Royal British Legion. It’s a well-known and respected institution, and that does mean something. 

You do have to be patient and understand that not everything is an instant fix. Sometimes things take time to resolve properly. This job will teach you not to panic. I often get told I’m calm and laid back, but the reality is that things go wrong all the time, both in this industry and in life. The key is how you respond.  The biggest challenge is always mentoring people during performance changes or when something isn’t working. It would be easy to go in hard, but nine times out of ten, there’s a reason behind it, whether it’s personal issues, frustrations or something in the background.  

Leading with curiosity will always get better results in the long run.  

If someone were starting out in this industry, I’d probably tell them not to take problems personally. Stay calm, communicate clearly, and focus on resolving the issue. 

Sometimes it can feel stressful because people don’t realise how much operational impact facilities management has. If you lose heating or power in an office, that’s one thing. But on this contract, for example, we support care homes, many with dementia wings, so the impact is completely different. If a washing machine goes down in a care home, that affects laundry, bedding and residents’ day-to-day comfort. If power goes down, you can’t wait two days for a fix because residents depend on the facility being safe and operational. 

You also need to be open to feedback. Personally, I genuinely like feedback. Even if it’s negative, it gives you something to work on and improve. Client feedback is particularly important, taking actions away and improving processes so problems don’t keep repeating themselves. 

You learn pretty quickly that no request is ever too strange in this industry 

You’re going to be faced with a variety of issues. You can start the day looking at reports and end it dealing with a power failure, flooding or emergency repairs somewhere completely different. 

People often only notice facilities management when something stops working, but there’s a huge amount of work happening constantly behind the scenes to prevent problems before they happen 

That’s probably the best way to describe the industry, really. 

You never quite know what’s coming next.”