National Fire Technical Manager

Accountable for the Fire Maintenance, Compliance, exceptional service, and store standards across circa 3,800 retail sites. Driving the maintenance, compliance, strategy and improvements working in collaboration with the Head of Fire Engineering. Providing support to the field teams ensuring a safe, legal, and functioning estate for customers, retail colleagues & stakeholders.

Job Overview

• Provide technical validation of contractor scopes and quotations for fire-related works, ensuring accuracy, value for money, and alignment with fire protection standards.
• Act as the primary fire subject matter expert for the Maintenance field teams, supporting day-to-day operational queries related to alarms, fire doors, compartmentation, suppression systems, and other fire protection assets.
• Maintain national governance of fire-related maintenance activities, ensuring clear ownership, consistency of process, and accurate reporting of compliance status across the estate.
• Support the development and continuous improvement of Fire Maintenance Standards, including contributing to updates of fire protection specifications, asset strategies, and O&M guidance.
• Lead post completion technical reviews of remedial works to ensure they meet regulatory, British Standard, and internal requirements (e.g., BS 5839, BS 9999, BS 9991, compartmentation principles, etc.).
• Provide technical input into design reviews, refurbishments, and change projects to ensure fire safety considerations are included at the earliest stage.
• Lead the process and technological improvements across this area of the business.
• Provide exceptional service and standards, demonstrating clear year on year reductions in our cost lines.
• Provide support on national Fire compliance and legal issues to senior stakeholders with defined actions for resolutions and improvement.
• Identify systemic fire safety issues across the estate (e.g., recurring defects, asset failures, regional variations) and develop targeted improvement programmes in collaboration with the Property team.
• Ensure accurate documentation and evidence capture for all fire related works to support audit trails, compliance validation, and regulatory inspections.
• Support national incident response for fire related events, providing technical guidance during investigations and contributing to root cause analysis and corrective action plans.
• Drive alignment between Maintenance and the Fire Engineering team, ensuring a unified approach to risk management, technical standards, and strategic direction.
• Developing and delivering an annual fire maintenance improvement plan.
• Ensure that the execution and close out of planned maintenance and reactive tasks is to a high professional standard.
• Provide the central coordination to resolving complex Fire maintenance issues that require multiple stakeholder engagement.
• Oversight and quality assurance of all Fire Risk Assessment (FRA) actions, ensuring findings are accurately translated into work orders, prioritised correctly, and progressed within required regulatory timeframes.
• Provide inclusive leadership and line management for a team of Service Support Engineers, fostering a high-performing, values-driven culture aligned to Managing a Winning Team principles. Set clear strategic objectives, build capability, and drive accountability, while actively supporting colleague wellbeing, engagement, development, and career progression.

Key Accountabilities

• Accountable for maintenance and compliance activities across circa 3,800 sites.
• Ensure national legislative compliance relating to fire engineering and associated maintenance assets.
• Lead contractor management activities, ensuring delivery performance, service quality, compliance, and operational effectiveness.
• Provide technical engineering leadership and support across fire-related systems and infrastructure.
• Support formal incident investigation processes, including root cause analysis and corrective action implementation.
• Drive engineering innovation and continuous improvement through collaboration with stakeholders and operational teams.
• Lead and influence engineering and maintenance strategy within a large-scale remote/site-based environment.
• Ensure effective governance, assurance, and reporting of engineering compliance and maintenance performance.
• Support delivery of safe operational environments aligned with people safety and operational risk requirements.
• Manage multiple priorities, stakeholders, and operational accountabilities across geographically dispersed locations.
• Promote lean methodologies, preventative maintenance techniques, and continuous improvement initiatives.

Leadership Responsibilities

• Lead diverse and remote engineering teams.
• Provide technical leadership, coaching, and guidance to engineering and maintenance colleagues.
• Influence senior stakeholders and cross-functional teams to deliver business objectives.
• Build strong internal and external engineering networks.
• Foster a culture of safety, accountability, collaboration, and engineering excellence.

Skills & Competencies

• Strong leadership capability within diverse and remote team environments.
• Advanced analytical and problem-solving capability, including root cause analysis methodologies.
• Effective change management and continuous improvement skills.
• Ability to analyse data and make informed, timely decisions.
• Strong organisational capability with experience managing multiple priorities and accountabilities.
• High level of computer literacy including EAM systems and Microsoft Office 365.
• Strong understanding of engineering governance, compliance, and maintenance best practice.
• Influencing and relationship management skills across senior stakeholder groups.

Knowledge & Experience

• Advanced technical knowledge of fire engineering assets, systems, maintenance requirements, regulations, and legislation.
• Considerable demonstrable engineering and maintenance experience within large-scale operational environments.
• Experience working within a similar remote/site maintenance engineering business.
• Proven experience managing contractor performance and engineering service delivery.
• Demonstrable experience supporting incident investigations and implementing corrective actions.
• Experience applying lean methodologies, preventative maintenance (PM), and root cause analysis (RCA) techniques.

Qualifications & Professional Requirements

• Qualified in an Engineering discipline.
• Time-served Engineering qualification Level 3, HNC, or above.
• Professional registration preferred or actively working towards professional registration.