Michele Simon - Career to date
July 2010 to date - Interserve HSBC contract
Director of Operations - Offices
During 2009 Interserve won the contract to supply FM services to HSBC UK offices and retail units. After an initial attempt at running the contract with existing management I joined them to develop the offices team (mostly staff who had TUPE’d from HSBC) to improve service delivery and raise their performance in order to achieve the contract KPIs.
May 2008 to May 2010 - NB Entrust Ltd
Director of Operations
In 2007, NB Entrust was created as a joint venture between NB Real Estate and Helical Bar to provide property services to NB’s 800 properties managed on behalf of investment funds. In January 2008 I was head hunted to overhaul their struggling operations. My remit was to raise the standards of delivery and implement new processes and systems.
In 2009, we won the BIFM Award for "Best Team Servicing Investor Clients" and one of my team was the winner of the BIFM recognition award for the "Rising FM of the Year 2010"
In February 2010 NB was bought by Capita Symonds who had a different focus and the organisation went through a process of dramatic reorganisation.
Responsibilities
- Delivery of services totalling £80 million across 800 buildings in the UK
- Management of five Divisional Directors with a current team of over 200 people
- Oversee the operational performance of suppliers, including performance management against KPIs
- Member of the Board of NB Entrust (until acquisition)
Achievements
- Successfully reorganised the team to create a promotional structure for FMs without increasing overheads
- Successfully developed a unique “cluster” model for working between the NB team and the supplier team, with bespoke training to reinforce the process
- Overhauled the building manager role, including introducing harmonised terms and conditions for all 90 building managers
- Successfully implemented training for all building managers, a new concept for NB
- Introduced a common IT platform for building managers to give access to email and the Intranet for policies and procedures
- Led a six month project to integrate two IT systems, dramatically reducing administration time for the teams
- Overhauled the mobilisation process for new properties, cutting the time taken by 50%
July 2003 to April 2008 - Grosvenor Estates Ltd
Director - Grosvenor Service Centre
Grosvenor is an international property development and investment group with operating companies covering Britain and Ireland, Australia, Asia Pacific and the Americas.
At the end of 2002, the Grosvenor Service Centre (GSC) was created to bring the Property Management of 360 buildings on the London Estate in-house and offer additional services to tenants. After a false start using an internal appointment I was recruited to be the head of the division with a five year remit to build a property management department providing high quality service appropriate to the Estate, at a cost acceptable to the Investment managers and the tenants.
Responsibilities
- Responsible for the strategic development of the division with an annual budget of £12 million
- Manage 6 Heads of Departments with a current team of over 60 people
- Member of the Grosvenor (London) Committee
- Member of the Grosvenor Health and Safety Board (IOSH qualified)
- Member of the Premises Committee, chaired by the Chief Executive
Achievements
- Successfully created a new team consisting of six departments with a staff that increased from four to thirty people
- Introduced the concept of ‘customers’ (rather than ‘tenants’)
- Put in place a Customer Satisfaction survey process. Levels of customer satisfaction with the service provided by the GSC increased by 19%
- Developed and put in place a planned maintenance scheme for the London portfolio (after 300 years of irregular ‘as required’ maintenance). The high quality standards demanded has led to five silver awards under the Considerate Contractors’ Scheme, an unusual achievement for this type of work
- Introduced the concept of Key Performance Indicators within the GSC.
- Successfully rationalised the supply chain and mobilised an external fixed price contract for Facilities Management, including full negotiation with Service Charge paying residents
- Implemented Health and Safety best practice and management across the Grosvenor (London) portfolio
May 1995 to July 2003 - HQ Global Workplaces
Director of Operations (Europe) - November 2000 to July 2003
The organisation was the largest operator of 5 star serviced office space in the world. HQ’s philosophy was to sell on quality of service rather than price and this attracted blue-chip companies who required high levels of customer care. The period 1997 through 2001 saw rapid growth in the UK division, with an increase from 6 to 40 buildings including 6 in mainland Europe, opened during early 2001.
After September 11th 2001 the US owners changed their worldwide strategy and the company entered a period of contraction. Many of the buildings were closed and there was a major change in culture with extensive reviews of overheads and staff reductions. The UK operation was finally sold in June 2003.
Responsibilities
- Responsible for the strategic development and efficient operation of the organisation’s Business Centres across the UK and Europe
- Overall responsibility for the property management of the organisation’s buildings
Achievements
- Increased profit margins by implementing cost monitoring procedures:
- Utilities - saved £220k pa against £492k spend
- Communications - saved £750k pa across the group.
- Put in place a strategy for customer service that required the development of:
- A Standards & Training manual and a new induction and training programme
- A measurement and feedback system on customer service standards to ensure that the best practices of the best centres were introduced at the other centres
- An innovative incentive scheme that ensured better customer service
- Managed the operational issues associated with a change in strategy from expansion to contraction which included:
- Closing 9 buildings, including managing all of the redundancy and legal issues
- Close scrutiny of management figures to ensure absolute efficiency in all of the remaining buildings, which resulted in more redundancies
- Maintaining morale and motivation amongst the remaining personnel