Global Facilities Director in London

Kennedys is looking to recruit a Global Facilities Director. The role is responsible for managing the firm's office footprint across jurisdictions, ensuring the property portfolio supports the firm's operational and strategic objectives, with a focus on commercial lease management, negotiation, and strategic real estate planning.

The successful Global Facilities Director will be an experienced Facilities or Real Estate leader with excellent understanding of commercial lease structures, landlord negotiations, global property markets, and the operational demands of a large professional services environment. The Global Facilities Director will act in a leadership capacity managing a global, cross-jurisdictional team to oversee the delivery of global projects, fostering collaboration across Business Services teams.

Team Kennedys Facilities team ensure the firm's offices are maintained and consistently delivered to a high standard. They drive the continuous improvement of all aspects of Kennedys facilities management and property portfolio globally. The team is over 80 employees with presence in all of Kennedys global offices.

Key responsibilities

• Leadership and Strategy: Lead the global Facilities team and set the strategic direction in line with the firm's overall goals. Promote a culture of service excellence, responsiveness, and continuous improvement within the Facilities function. Lead and develop a high-performing team of Regional Leads, Office Managers and Facilities coordinators. Act as the senior facilities lead for the firm's environmental sustainability strategy and net zero action plan working with Executive Leadership, Responsible Business, Finance and Risk. Provide strategic leadership on carbon reduction across real estate and facilities operations, ensuring consistency across all global offices. Partner with HR, IT, Risk, and Partners to plan space allocations, workplace design, and future growth needs. Lead cross-functional project teams through office openings, refits, relocations, and refurbishment projects.
• Property and Lease Management: Lead lease negotiations for new office space, renewals, and space optimisation initiatives across multiple jurisdictions. Manage and review all commercial lease agreements for the firms global real estate. Negotiate service contracts, and vendor agreements to secure the best terms for the firm. Foster strong relationships with landlords, contractors, and service providers to facilitate effective negotiations. Lead in planning and delivery of all office moves globally, including expansions, refurbishments, reconfigurations, and new office openings. Keep abreast of all property related compliance and ensure they are adhered to throughout the firm.
• Facilities: Oversee the management of the firm's facilities, including but not limited to, storage, maintenance, cleaning, catering, post, print, records, copiers and stationery and couriers. Work closely with Local Managing Partners and COO to ensure strategic alignment and cost-effective Facilities Management solutions. Set and manage the Global Facilities budget ensuring expenditure is in line with the approved budget and analyse costs throughout the budget year. Produce reporting for the executive group on costs and performance metrics. Deliver facilities projects in line with the firm's strategic plan.

Required experience

• Demonstrable experience managing high-end premises, facilities, and general support services, within a professional services environment.
• Extensive experience managing end-to-end real estate strategy including, embedding Net Zero and sustainability outcomes, property acquisition, lease negotiation, office moves, and site exits, while balancing commercial, operational, and environmental priorities.
• Strong leadership skills with a track record of motivating and managing teams effectively, fostering a collaborative and high-performance culture.
• Extensive experience managing the end-to-end real estate lifecycle and location strategy including, embedding Net Zero and sustainability outcomes, property acquisition, lease negotiation, office moves, and site exits, while balancing commercial, operational, and environmental priorities.
• Strong financial acumen and analytical skills.
• Ability to think and act independently, with a flexible approach.
• Ability to be resilient, dealing effectively with changes to plans.
• Excellent understanding of working in a commercial environment including the identification of commercial risk and providing high level commercial advice to stakeholders at all levels.
• Confident communicator with strong influencing skills and stakeholder management experience.
• Strong understanding of Facilities Management best practices and supplier management.

Please let us know if you require any additional support or adjustments to be made in order to submit your application to Kennedys.

About Kennedys: Kennedys is a global law firm with expertise in dispute resolution and advisory services. With over 2,750 people worldwide across 47 offices in the UK, Europe, Middle East, Asia Pacific and America we have some of the most respected legal minds in their field. Our lawyers handle both contentious and non-contentious matters, and provide a range of specialist legal services, for many industry sectors but we have particular expertise in litigation and dispute resolution, especially in defending insurance and liability claims.

We welcome high-performing lawyers, business services professionals, secretaries, graduates and apprentices to join our rapidly expanding global firm. Whatever your role at Kennedys, you'll be involved in exciting and stimulating work, where your input will make a difference.

Our culture and values form a big part of who we are and we take them seriously. We make a difference by being approachable, straightforward, supportive and distinctive. Our are at the core of who we are and what make us a great firm to work with and for. The Firm recognises the value of investing in our people's development and believes our culture and values contribute to the quality of our work and of our client relationships.

We strive to celebrate empower our people and ensure everyone can bring their authentic selves to work. We've created a culture based on client service, professional excellence, hard work and trust, where diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) is a key priority. We recognise that many of our people want to work for an employer that is aligned to their values, which is why we are building an inclusive culture, decarbonising our operations and supporting our people to thrive at work. Our people are the key to driving this change and helping us to make a difference to our clients, our people and the communities in which we live and work.

Kennedys is an equal opportunities employer and is committed to ensuring our recruitment processes are as inclusive as possible. We expect all employees to be aware of and comply with all relevant policies and procedures within their jurisdiction, including those relating to Information Security, Data Protection and Quality Management, refer any breach promptly to Risk & Compliance and to complete all mandatory training when requested.