WHO DOES THE JOB: CHRIS BLISS, ESTATE DIRECTOR, LIVERPOOL ONE PROPERTY MANAGEMENT COMPANY
ON THE EDGE WHO DOES THE JOB: RICHARD PETRIE, AREA FACILITIES MANAGER, BT FACILITIES SERVICES After taking to Richard Petrie about his job, you might mistake him for an explorer, photographer or wildlife documentary maker. Although these aren’t prerequisites for the role, he puts all of that knowledge to good use as a facilities manager in rural Scotland. BT’s in-house facilities management team, BT Facilities Service (BTFS), looks after all of its 7,000 sites across the UK. This includes London’s BT Tower and BT Sport studios, but also some facilities located in less built-up areas.
What the job entails: Petrie’s job takes him to the extremities of the British Isles. He is responsible for 262 sites across northern and western Scotland, maintaining BT radio stations and small telephone and broadband connection exchanges across 15,000 square miles. He and his team of six – all dotted across the Highlands – carry out planned and reactive maintenance at these sites.
Some are particularly tricky to access. For the inner Hebrides, Petrie takes a rigid inflatable boat (RIB) out to islands, and often bounds across fields of cows or sheep. He will check on the security and safety of the structure of the building, complete planned technical maintenance and equipment testing and cleaning the interior of each site. Petrie will also keep in regular contact with his team, who are all out at various rural sites, to ensure their safety and resolve any problems. Scheduling visits to sites – some of which are unmanned – can largely depend on the weather. Snow and rain can make some roads, many of which are single track, inaccessible. It’s not just weather that can cause delays, and it is often an extra job for Petrie to rearrange his schedule. “It once took me an extra 90 minutes to reach a site, as the road was blocked by Highland cows,” says Petrie. For Petrie, a day at work can be exhausting. Endless travel, unexpected complications and gruelling weather can make for a taxing week. But he thrives on the unique challenges. The stunning landscape in the Scottish Highlands somewhat lightens a burdensome commute.
The Liverpool ONE retail and leisure complex spans 42 acres and includes retail stores, bars, restaurants, a 14-screen cinema, 36-hole indoor golf course and – on the rooftop – a five-acre park. It attracts more than 20 million visitors a year and is managed 24 hours a day, seven days a week by an estates team managing a multi-million pound service charge budget. The estate is owned by Grosvenor Estates, and managed by its subsidiary company, Liverpool ONE Property Management Company, led by Chris Bliss.
What the job entails: Bliss and his team operate every aspect of the estate, from security, cleaning, customer services to consumer-facing operations and commercialisation management on site. Bliss has a 160-strong facilities staff to call upon.
“We’ve got wonderful architecture; we know we’ve got excellent retailing and the asset management team work really hard on that,” says Bliss. “But what’s the bit where we can really make a difference? It’s in how we engage with that customer. How can we enliven their day, how can we make Liverpool ONE feel really magnetic? That’s what the driving factor was for us.” Maintenance is the exception to the in-house rule. “Where there’s high-risk activity, we use subcontracted specialists,” says Bliss. “Honeywell does all of our M&E and electronics, and they have a permanent team that’s based here. We also use Otis for lifts and escalators and Mitie for high-level glass cleaning and specialist cleaning [for example, the cinema screens] as well as grounds maintenance in the park.” Bliss must also oversee waste management – the volume of which can spiral out of control in a busy retail environment if it isn’t supervised carefully. Between 500-600 tonnes of cardboard a year is recycled, while glass recycling was introduced two years ago. Another aspect of the FM operation is business performance, which is headed up by Ian Finlayson, who provides analysis of footfall and sales. He talks to store managers about their individual performance and their performance against similar retailers, data which is then fed into the asset management team so that they can understand how those tenants are performing; solutions to under-performing tenants can then be discussed, such as locating them elsewhere on the estate. The team faces a balancing act of keeping a variety of facilities operational – some 24 hours a day – while providing extra value for its retailers on site.
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