PA and office coordinator in London

Waugh Thistleton Architects is looking for a PA and office coordinator to join its team in London. We are seeking a PA/office coordinator, which is a key role within our design studio. Join our award-winning Shoreditch studio in the PA/office coordinator office-based, full-time role. Our practice is renowned for our delivery of beautifully designed, sustainable architecture. The role is pivotal, supporting senior leadership and ensuring the smooth running of the office.

This role is front-facing and is often the first point of contact with all visitors and clients, and is office-based.

• Personal assistant: managing the directors’ inbox, assessing the priority of appointments and correspondence and responding accordingly, ensuring they are fully prepared for all meetings, researching contacts, and seeking briefing from the wider team as required, managing the directors’ diary to ensure they have sufficient time to engage in the design process of projects within the office.
• Scheduling: timely meetings for projects at key points in their development with the team, managing site visits, maintaining a strong relationship with the site managers and follow up communications with clients, keeping a rolling to-do list and helping to ensure that actions are completed, booking travel when required and providing other logistical support for the team, providing support to other Directors as required.
• Finance: managing director’s expenses claims, collating costs related to project-related travel/speaker events and issuing invoices for speaker events, ensuring all expenditure is recharged, maintaining an up-to-date invoice schedule and following up any unpaid invoices for events, acting as a trusted gatekeeper, handling confidential information with discretion.
• Client management/business development: greeting all visitors to the office, providing refreshments as required, maintaining an excel contact list of existing and prospective clients, capturing details of interactions and flagging up contacts to be followed up, working with the directors to identify prospective clients to be approached and set up new business meetings with new and existing clients.
• Office coordination: daily review of the info@ email account and dealing with all enquiries, keeping the email account organised, co-ordinating quarterly student sessions with the team to assist with the many informal student enquiries, providing support to the recruitment of new team members, keeping a log of applications, setting up interviews and responding to all candidates, overseeing induction of new team members, introducing them on arrival and ensuring the various meetings outlined in the new starter checklist take place within the agreed timeframes, organising social events for the team: birthday celebrations, Christmas and summer parties and events, buying gifts for team members as required, ensuring the smooth operation of the office, maintaining office supplies, ensuring premises look professional, meeting rooms are cleared, and kitchen is tidy, liaising with key suppliers, reviewing contracts, and ensuring value for money, managing maintenance ensuring ad-hoc repairs are carried out as required, helping to respond to telephone calls, screening enquiries and requests, dealing with calls as appropriate, coordinating weekly office meetings and organising breakfast, overseeing the recycling strategy and waste separation ensuring the team and cleaner are briefed.

Skills required: fully conversant in Microsoft Office – Word, Excel and PowerPoint, excellent standard of written English and verbal communication skills, organised and able to prioritise and multi-task effectively to meet deadlines, able to work on own initiative with minimum supervision, able to work under pressure and maintain a calm focus during hectic times.

Offer: competitive salary commensurate with level of experience, a dynamic and supportive work environment where your contributions are valued and celebrated. We ask that all applicants have evidence of the right to work in the UK. We cannot support visa sponsorship. The chance to work with a team of passionate and talented individuals.

Start date: 15th June to be agreed. Applicants must have the right to work in the UK. Please note that we are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role. Please send CV with PA/Studio Manager as the subject heading. Please include a cover letter explaining why you are the perfect fit for this position. We kindly ask that applicants don’t drop CVs into the office.