Technical Officer (6 months fixed term)

Our repairs and maintenance team are a hive of activity, this is one of the most important services that we deliver. Every day brings its unique set of challenges which need your super technical skills and logical decision-making skills to resolve. This is more than a technical focused role its about customer engagement and support and therefore an essential ingredient is loving what you do and smiling when you do it. You will be responsible for the delivery of day-to-day repairs or minor project related work intended to protect or improve the homes of our customers. You will work closely with tenants and Red Kite senior managers and staff to deliver excellent, cost-effective building maintenance and improvement services. You will be readily available and eager to assist customers in a range of different scenarios, using your technical skill and experience to ensure that our tenants are kept safe and their homes are well maintained.

What we need you to do:

• Work with the Repairs Manager to set key performance targets and milestones for allocated projects and monitor agreed deliverables to achieve expected outputs
• Manage day to day work or minor project work to minimise exposure of both financial and health and safety related risks.
• Take part in routines during office hours and from time to time outside normal office hours to provide an excellent responsive repair service
• Have a thirst for value for money, ensuring that both large- and small-scale work is delivered against approved budgets, or better still, under budget without compromising quality
• Make sure that all work is delivered equitably and fairly and maximises the capital value of assets
• Work closely with the Relationship Team and all other staff and stakeholders to develop and deliver excellent services, putting to use new technologies
• Pursue excellence in all aspects of the repairs service and the wider business
• Make sure our tenant and leaseholders inspire and influence the design, delivery and outcome of everything we do
• Help with making sure our vision, mission and values influence every aspect of our business.
• Have a great approach to customer service putting our customers at the heart of what you do.

What you will be responsible for:

• Giving technical advice and support to colleagues, staff and other stakeholders
• Managing specific projects allocated by either mobile technology or manual allocation
• Overseeing the quality of work of contractors making sure we comply with all relevant documentation, standards, good practice and guidance
• Reconciling and settling final accounts and valuations, paying responsive repair invoices, dealing with contractual disputes, extensions of time and variations and issuing relevant certification
• Providing project update reports and post project reviews
• Providing technical repairs support to both internal and external customers, which will include site visits to inspect work, diagnosing defects, identifying solutions, investigating and resolving complaints and agreeing follow on works, as well as helping with home and estate inspections and mutual exchanges
• Playing your part in an office cover rota to provide appropriate technical cover and handover to the out of hours service
• Being involved in a rota system (usually one week in every nine) to provide ad hoc evening and weekend phone support for contractors and customers when emergency situations arise. This may also require occasional on-site attendance of emergency work e.g. major fires, floods etc. acting on our behalf. You may also be required to act as support to other on-call staff where higher-level management input is needed or where escalation is required.

Where you have come from:

• A place where you have managed large scale and small property related work and delivered works by supervising contractors or in house maintenance staff
• A customer focused organisation
• A housing organisation or similar would be preferable
• A place that prioritised best value services and continuous improvement
• A place where technology was the catalyst for improving services to customers.

What our teams will see in you:

• Someone who has experience of delivering large and small building projects to occupied/domestic homes
• A person who is skilled at managing budgets and understands value for money
• Someone who demonstrates negotiating and dispute resolution skills
• Someone who leads by example and personally demonstrates organisational values and expected behaviours
• A team player who works as part of a team, looks at the bigger picture and does not work in a silo
• A person who has a good understanding of best practice within social housing
• Someone who has lots of technical knowledge relating to construction and construction-related health and safety
• Someone who is IT literate, proficient in Microsoft Word, Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint
• A customer focused individual that genially wants to deliver excellent service

As person, you will:

• Be skilled at building effective and productive working relationships with staff, managers, partners and customers
• Be excellent at verbal and written communication
• Be a confident, independent problem solver and an effective decision maker
• Have a high degree of personal drive
• Be committed to the aims and ambitions of Red Kite and the broader issues of social housing
• Be flexible and be open to change
• Have good time management skills and able to prioritise your workload to meet deadlines
• Be a team player with good self-awareness
• Have a service improvement attitude
• Be able to translate ideas and examples of good practice into improved service delivery
• Have relevant qualified background (BTech/HNC/CIOB/RICS/ONC) or equivalent or proven relevant experience
• Have a full, valid driving licence
• Be able to supervise work in any delivery model chosen by Red Kite