Area Building Surveyor

We are seeking an Area Building Surveyor to join our Facilities Management (FM) team. This is a great opportunity to work with West Sussex County Council covering a broad range of property assets, such as Libraries, Fire Service, Children's and Adults' social care. The WSCC estate has a wide range of buildings including heritage sites, listed buildings and new builds.

In this position you will work in conjunction with the Area Building Engineers and Area Facilities Manager to deliver a quality FM service to support WSCC customers. You will also get to work closely with the Estates team to fully understand FM responsibilities for each of the buildings and at times liaise with building tenants.

About the role

Salary: £49,817 to £53,051 per annum.

Location: Your office base will be Bognor Regis,

Working pattern: Full-time, 37 hours per week Monday - Friday.

You will need to be able to travel independently around the county, including to areas that may not be easily accessible by public transport. Pool cars and pool bikes are available.

We maintain and improve the Property Assets that support the work of the County Council in its role of supporting the needs of the residents of West Sussex. All the properties have premises requirements linked to the services delivered from them. Individual buildings within the same Service portfolio often have different operational requirements.

Understanding these differences and using an extensive range of Building Surveying skills and experience is a primary function of the Area Building Surveyor role.

What you'll need to succeed
The role entails working with a variety of Services, which have different operational requirements and expectations. Understanding how the building is, or could be, better used by a Service will enable you to formulate and agree client briefs in discussion with the service.

For this role you will be expected to demonstrate relevant skills and experiences including:

• Experience of working with a wide variety of buildings that are demanding due to age and condition. Being able to balance the complex needs of your customers with budgetary constraints to ensure the optimal solution is specified and implemented is essential.
• The nature of the role requires you to be technically competent, flexible and able to prioritise a busy workload. You will have to balance competing demands including cost, risk and time pressures, to deliver best practice outcomes that are compliant with statutory requirements.
• Excellent stakeholder management and interpersonal skills to establish productive working relationships with your customers and contractors.
• Attention to detail in your work and be able to work as part of a team assisting other surveyors from time-to-time as well as other FM colleagues on Annual Site Reviews.
• There is a regular and intrinsic requirement to communicate in English with members of the public.

The job will require an ability to travel independently around the County, often to remote locations, and attendance at some meetings may be required out of normal office hours.

Key Skills:

• Analytical and judgement skills with the ability to quickly assimilate varied and highly complex information from a variety of sources, consider technical issues, risks and resource implications, define the scope of work and recommend the most appropriate course of action.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills to work in a customer focused manner, providing a high-quality service. Highly developed influencing, negotiating and persuasive skills to persuade a client of the need to take a specific course of action, and the ability to communicate information which may be complex and contentious to a variety of audiences.
• Partnership working skills and a multidisciplinary approach to liaise with clients, contractors and other internal teams to determine an effective course of action.
• Ability to research and analyse a variety of technical documentation and practice, including cost benefit and whole-life analysis, to produce evidence-based, robust solutions and written reports.
• Ability to think laterally and to adopt to changing situations in a measured and flexible manner to adapt advice and guidance to suit any change in circumstance, whether legislative, structural, partnership related etc.
• Ability to organise and prioritise work, coordinate a variety of tasks in a clear and logical way, and meet agreed deadlines.

Qualifications and/or experience:

• Degree in Surveying / Building, HNC/HND level Surveying / Building, or equivalent level of academic attainment with significant relevant experience and extensive experience in the application of the knowledge to the specific requirements of the job and relevant areas of work.
• Relevant membership of a relevant professional body e.g. Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (MRICS) or Chartered Institute of Building (MCIOB).
• Advanced theoretical, practical and procedural knowledge for the range of professional building surveying and project management activities, plus a detailed knowledge of organisational policies, practices and procedures.
• Detailed, thorough advanced knowledge and experience of building construction and building regulation requirements including CDM regulations. Broad understanding of asset management maintenance design and construction procedures, techniques and statutory approval procedures.
• Considerable depth of knowledge of relevant statutory property legislation. This includes interpretation of very complex building control legislation and statutory guidance.
• Relevant advanced theoretical or organisational knowledge of systems, procedures and policies associated with operating a demanding and customer focussed project management briefing and delivery service.
• Sound and accurate IT knowledge e.g. use of maintenance databases / software, AutoCAD LT and Microsoft Office, to carry out service-related processes.

For a full detailed list of the skills and qualifications required for this position please refer to the attached Job Description.

Rewards and Benefits

• Access to our Employee Assistance Programme, we are committed to providing a healthy work life balance.
• You will benefit from a generous amount of annual leave, plus the opportunity to buy additional leave, an excellent local government pension scheme as well as a range of discounts giving our staff access to hundreds of offers.
• For more information about the wide variety of benefits you can take advantage of please visit our Rewards and Benefits page.

How to Apply

Click apply below, upload your CV and cover letter. Your cover letter should:

• Outline your motivations for applying.
• Explain the skills and experience you can bring to the role (please refer to the key skills in the attached job description to show what skills you have and your level of experience utilising these skills).

Internal candidates wishing to apply for this role will be considered for a secondment position. Please can you therefore discuss and agree this with your manager before applying for this position.

Please ensure you have saved the job description attached to the main advert on our website as, once the job has closed, you may not have the opportunity to download again.

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults. This post is subject to right to work within the UK, enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check, satisfactory references, and a health check.

Equity, inclusion and accessibility is very important to West Sussex County Council. We welcome and encourage applications from everyone, as this helps us build a diverse and talented workforce, that reflects the communities we serve. We ensure our approach to recruitment is flexible and supportive to enable all applicants to be at their best and to ensure they have the best possible chance of success.

We operate a guaranteed interview scheme for applicants that have a disability, are a veteran or are a care leaver. More information can be found on our application help page.