A day in the life of… James Pye Property and Facilities Lead

James joined ECL back in January as the Property and Facilities Lead.

Before joining ECL, James worked for NHS property services, working on the Open Space project, which renovates vacant space and offers bookable clinical spaces in NHS properties across England.

Here’s what he said about his role:

I have an extremely varied role, I look after the maintenance and compliance of our properties, that means I manage a lot of internal and external relationships and look after the caretaking team who have a large impact across the estate”.

“I’m currently focussing on delivering our Capex projects, so if you have asked for a kitchen to be installed or if you need anything built or altered, I’m usually the person to facilitate these works”.

My job is all about helping you do your job, if something is broken, not quite right or needs improving in terms of the built environment I will look to resolve it.

What does a typical workday look like for you?

“Some days might involve visiting caretakers to catch-up with any issues and review upcoming tasks or meeting with and talking to contractors for upcoming work and liaising with the landlord and MITIE”.

“My workday needs to be extremely agile due to the nature of things going wrong and the ever-changing priorities”.

“I also manage the Facilities team tickets and support people through Freshservice.

“I aim to visit at least three sites a week – although sometimes my days involve administrative work such as financial tasks, reviewing policy or reports and creating spreadsheets to track data.

“I mostly am scattered everywhere, but I try to have at least one day at Seax every week”.

What do you love about your job?

“I like how varied my position is and how many different departments and people in the business I work with”.

“I really enjoy the amount of people I connect with and I’m always learning something new”.

“It’s nice to see work from inception to delivery and the impact is has on our staff and the customers”

Would you recommend roles in your department?

"Yes! For sure - I think that it's a very rewarding job and varied career.

“Although the role involves a lot of conflict resolution and relationship management, I would highly recommend it to anyone.