Group Head of Maintenance and Minor Works - East London
Job description
Original text imported from Reed
Morgan Hunt currently requires a Group Head of Maintenance for FE College based in East London on a 6 Month Fixed Term Basis
Salary From £57,000pa to £66,000pa Depending on experience
Hours: 35 Hours: 09:00 to 17:00 Monday to Friday with a requirement to work up to three Saturday open days and two open evenings per year.
Location: East London
Job Purpose
To lead and develop the college's maintenance and engineering functions, ensuring a safe, compliant and well-maintained estate. The post holder will manage the day-to-day maintenance team and contractors, oversee planned and reactive works. They will ensure statutory compliance, provide technical leadership, drive continuous improvement, and support a positive health and safety culture across all campuses.
· Lead and manage the maintenance team, ensuring high performance, clear priorities, and effective resource planning.
· Set standards for service delivery, safety, compliance and customer service.
· Foster a collaborative, solution-focused culture within the team.
· Oversee reactive and planned preventative maintenance across the estate, ensuring compliance with statutory requirements and best practice.
· Manage workflows through the CAFM system, ensuring accurate records, timely updates and efficient scheduling.
· Ensure safe working practices, risk awareness and adherence to H&S legislation across all activities.
Strategic Head of Maintenance Candidate Requirements
The role is focused on a new fixed-term role created to support the Acting Director during a director's phased return from sick leave. The role, which involves managing the Estates Department's maintenance and security functions across multiple London campuses, requires someone with M&E trade qualifications, people management skills, and contractor management experience. The position is based on-site at various campuses across inner and outer London, with a 35-hour work week requirement and emergency planning across the college group.
Morgan Hunt is a multi-award-winning recruitment business for interim, contract and temporary recruitment and acts as an Employment Agency in relation to permanent vacancies. Morgan Hunt is an equal opportunities employer. Job suitability is assessed on merit in accordance with the individual's skills, qualifications and abilities to perform the relevant duties required in a particular role.
Key skills
AI-extracted from the job advert
Application advice
5 AI-generated recommendations to maximise your chances.
⭐ Highlight your M&E trade qualifications prominently at the top of your CV under a 'Key Qualifications' section, as the advert explicitly lists this as a core requirement for the role.
📊 Quantify your maintenance management experience: e.g. 'Managed PPM schedule across 5 sites, reducing reactive call-outs by 30% over 12 months' to demonstrate measurable estate improvement.
🏫 Tailor your CV to reference experience in education, public sector or multi-campus environments, as the role is within an FE College group spanning inner and outer London campuses.
🛠️ Explicitly name the CAFM systems you have used (e.g. Planon, Concept Evolution, Facilities iQ) since the advert calls out CAFM management as a key operational responsibility.
🎯 Emphasise your contractor management experience with specifics — number of contractors managed, contract values overseen, or compliance audit outcomes — to align with the advert's focus on contractor oversight and statutory compliance.
Suggested CV bullets
3 bullets our AI drafted for this specific advert, mirroring its ATS keywords.
Add these 3 bullets under your most recent experience:
- •Managed PPM and reactive maintenance programmes across 5 campuses using Planon CAFM, achieving 97% scheduled task completion and reducing emergency call-outs by 28% over 12 months.
- •Led a 12-person in-house maintenance team and 8 specialist contractors, implementing KPI frameworks that improved contractor on-time delivery from 71% to 94% within one academic year.
- •Ensured full statutory compliance across M&E, fire safety and water hygiene regimes for a 40,000 sq ft multi-building estate, passing all regulatory inspections with zero critical findings.
Free to copy — tailoring requires a 30-sec CV upload.
Your cover letter is ready
We've drafted a cover letter for Morgan Hunt Recruitment. Preview the opening, then unlock the full personalised version.
Letter preview — tailored to Morgan Hunt Recruitment
Dear Hiring Manager,
Morgan Hunt's Group Head of Maintenance and Minor Works role at the East London FE College group stands out as a strong match for my background in multi-site estates management. With hands-on M&E trade qualifications and a track record of delivering statutory compliance and contractor management across complex estates, I am well placed to provide the technical leadership this fixed-term position demands.
My background in facilities and engineering management includes overseeing planned preventative maintenance programmes across 6 sites using CAFM systems, managing a team of 14 direct and contracted staff, and reducing reactive maintenance incidents by 25% through improved scheduling and risk assessment protocols. I have operated within heavily regulated environments where H&S legislation adherence and accurate record-keeping were non-negotiable.
Free signup, no card needed. Export to PDF/Word requires a £1.99 trial (14 days).
Interview questions
10 questions generated from this advert.
Technical
- ›Which CAFM systems have you used to manage PPM schedules, and how did you ensure data accuracy and timely updates?
- ›How do you ensure statutory compliance across a multi-site estate, particularly regarding H&S legislation and regulatory inspections?
- ›Describe your approach to managing both reactive and planned preventative maintenance simultaneously across multiple campuses.
- ›What M&E trade qualifications do you hold, and how have they informed your technical leadership of a maintenance team?
- ›How have you managed contractor performance, including KPI setting, auditing and escalation processes?
Behavioural
- ›Tell me about a time you inherited a maintenance team with low performance standards — how did you turn it around?
- ›Describe a situation where you had to manage a significant estate emergency across multiple sites. What was your approach and what was the outcome?
- ›Give an example of when you had to balance competing maintenance priorities with limited resources. How did you decide what to tackle first?
- ›Tell me about a time you improved a health and safety culture within a facilities or estates team.
- ›Describe a situation where you had to work closely with senior leadership during a period of organisational change or transition.
STAR answer examples
Model answers using the Situation-Task-Action-Result framework. Adapt to your own experience.
Tell me about a time you inherited a maintenance team with low performance standards — how did you turn it around?
Describe a situation where you had to manage a significant estate emergency across multiple sites. What was your approach and what was the outcome?