Building Surveyor
- Employer
- The National Trust
- Location
- Newport (Casnewydd)
- Salary
- Competitive
- Closing date
- 26 Jan 2025
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- Sector
- Property, Construction
- Contract Type
- Permanent
- Hours
- Full Time
- Specialism
- Building Surveyor, Conservation, Estates Management, Property Management
- Level
- Chartered Surveyor
- Business Type
- Public Sector
Job Details
Are you passionate about the conservation of heritage buildings in Wales? We have an exciting new opportunity for an Architect / Building Surveyor to become part of our team, who are dedicated to the preservation of some of the most renowned historic houses and castles in Wales.
In collaboration with fellow Architects and Building Surveyors, you’ll engage with other professionals and conservation experts to offer support and specialised knowledge across various facets of building operations, conservation efforts, defect analysis, and project execution. Your contributions will play a vital role in ensuring that our properties meet sustainable standards for building conservation and restoration.
We’re looking for someone technically proficient in conservation, maintenance, and current building regulations to ensure effective delivery of projects.
This role can either be based in South Wales or North Wales and there are requirements to be able to travel across the region.
If you’re looking for variety and innovative challenges, you’ll find a professional environment that suits you well here
What its like to work here
You’ll join our National Trust Cymru Consultancy Team - an inhouse team of multidisciplinary experts who together form a great repository of skills talents and experience.
The team's diverse skills and high level of expertise enable our properties and places to benefit from a wide variety of creative ideas and innovative solutions, this deep knowledge supports our dual purpose of preserving the nation's unique heritage and landscapes while ensuring these places are welcoming for everyone.
As this role covers parts of either North or South Wales, your contractual place of work will be the nearest National Trust consultancy office to your home. These offices are Tredegar (Newport), Llandeilo, Erddig, Dinas or Penrhyn (Bangor. Our hybrid working policy means you can balance office and home working with site visits and meetings at other National Trust places. We’ll talk about this in more detail at interview, but you should expect to be at a National Trust site for 40–60% of your working week.
This role looks after some rural properties, some with very limited access via public transport. You'll be required to travel to different locations across the portfolio, sometimes at short notice, please keep this in mind when applying.
What you’ll be doing
You’ll be a key part of our buildings team, which includes facilities managers, surveyors, planners, project and contract managers, along with various other experts. In this position, you will be one of the specialists dedicated to caring for our unique properties, working closely with our property teams to support our active portfolios. Your internal clients are usually National Trust General Managers and Facilities Managers at local sites.
You’ll have a strong interest in the historic buildings and environment of Wales, focusing on their sustainable use, repair, and conservation. You’ll be skilled at planning ahead and managing budgets, creating accurate and reliable plans for the future - taking work from inception to delivery.
You’ll mainly work across 3 property portfolios in Wales, working alongside other consultants and property teams, in addition to being supported by the wider building surveyor community in Wales.
Your expertise in conservation will be essential as you oversee our important properties and structures. Your work will be focussed on a variety of small, medium and larger-scale project work (this can be conservation or compliance related). You’ll also provide expert advice, and delivery of building work to the highest conservation standards.
Who we’re looking for
We’d love to hear from you if you have:
- A Chartered level membership of Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Chartered Institute of Buildings (CIOB) or Architects Registration Board (ARB).
- Knowledge and enthusiasm for building conservation, defect diagnosis, maintenance, and repair; ability to review and inspect the condition of buildings and produce a comprehensive report on the findings and potential repairs.
- Proven experience in preparing specifications, work schedules, and managing contracts.
- The ability to think strategically to identify future need and priorities and produce considered and measured prioritised plans for work and projects to maximise restricted resources.
- Experience leading project teams and positively interacting with external stakeholders, such as Conservation Officers, CADW, and regulatory agencies.
- Proficiency briefing and overseeing consultants, acting as a client-side advisor and technical expert, including working with Building Surveyors and Architects.
Click the Apply button for more details and to make an application
Company
The National Trust has over 255,000 hectares of land, of which about 80% is farmed by tenants. We also have 4,133 rented cottages, 1,978 commercial tenancies, 1,806 agricultural tenancies, 1,014 way leaves and easements and an investment and operational property portfolio valued at £82.87m, of which £66.35m is specified as investment property.
The management of these tenancies and assets, together with the relationship with our tenants, underpins our £40m+ annual rental income and is absolutely essential to the delivery of our conservation work.
Build our future
Think you know what it means to work in building surveying at the National Trust? Think again. As the largest building conservation organisation in Europe, the Trust sets out to protect the nation’s heritage – and building surveying plays a vital role in that. Nick Dutton, brand new Lead Building Surveyor for the London South East region, shares his immense enthusiasm for the profession and reveals why the National Trust offers a unique opportunity to thrive, and further a career in building surveying.
One of the major strategic aims of the National Trust is to look after the places we love – and as building surveyors, individuals like Nick Dutton, are doing just that – demonstrating how vital the profession is to the cause of the entire organisation. The building surveying team deal with all issues concerning buildings, from compliance, day to day and cyclical repairs, all the way up to large building projects. This means that a career in building surveying at the National Trust offers incredible breadth and variety.
London South East is one of six regions in the National Trust, but contains around 25 percent of properties with 192 Grade 1 and Grade 2 star listed buildings, circa 890 let estate cottages, 32 registered parks and gardens, 178 ancient monuments and almost 3,000 hectares of land. It’s an incredibly important region and the largest community of building surveyors within the National Trust.
“The collection of buildings is both unique and diverse requiring special skills, care and attention – and most of all a love for buildings,” says Nick. “There are not many organisations or roles able to offer this level of variety – from the very small, to the very grand and everything in between. There’s no doubt that working in building surveying at the National Trust represents a truly unique opportunity.”
Making a difference
Since he was very young, Nick has been aware of the National Trust and he’s always had a desire to work for the organisation given the range of properties and their conservation ethos. “It’s a unique charity, preserving a great deal of the country’s heritage for the future.. Having worked in a number of building surveying roles both within consultancy and client side, it was the right time for a change. I’d reached the point in my career where I was ready to pursue my dreams, a career that really fulfilled me.”
Collaboration in conservation
Nick’s just two months into his role at the National Trust, but it lives up to everything he hoped it would be. In fact, it’s the ability to work with a group of people who share the same ethos and values as him, with a similar outlook on historic buildings that has really brought the role to life for him.
Nick’s role as Lead Building Surveyor is a new one for the National Trust that came about following an investment into the building surveying function within the organisation. As such, Nick and the other regional leads are working closely together to ensure the building surveying community is acting as one. They work at raising standards across the board, promoting collaborative working within the building surveying community, championing the conservation work undertaken by the Trust and role of building surveying, and acting as mentors and technical leads for their regions.
“I work in close collaboration with the other regional Lead Building Surveyors to ensure we’re working in a consistent fashion. We share ideas, knowledge and techniques across the regions, so that best practice is shared and achieved across the country. It’s a very collegiate vibe, which I’ve not experienced in this way before.”
For Nick, the best part of his role is promoting the skills of the building surveyors and championing the work of the National Trust to an internal and external audience. He’s reaching out to organisations and individuals who share the organisation’s aspirations, as well as those that don’t. Which can be challenging and exhilarating all at once. Whether it’s creating new collaborations, or joining forces with amenity societies and conservation charities there’s always a new challenge ahead. Being able to promote not just the vital work the National Trust does for the nation, but the building surveying profession as a whole, makes his job incredibly inspiring.
If you’d like to make a difference, and give back to conservation, join us and help us deliver our vision.
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