Student Residences in Canada
I am the Manager of Residence Life at one of Canada’s top undergraduate Universities.
Student Housing in the UK
Before moving to Canada I spent 15 years working for Unipol Student Homes in a number of different roles including as the Assistant Chief Executive (Housing). This was a role I held until I left the organisation in 2006.
I was responsible for managing a team of 8 full time professional staff managing 2,000 student rooms in two cities for three Universities.
Facilities Management
My team was responsible for occupancy, void reduction, marketing and all aspects of hard and soft facilities management. This included reactive repairs, routine cyclical maintenance and planned maintenance and refurbishments. We managed individual houses for families or students sharing in addition to apartment buildings of between 40 and 450 students.
Service and Standards Improvement
During my 15 years with Unipol I saw the organisation grow with new residences being opened and the existing stock refurbished and developed. New services and facilities were introduced and the organisation was always at the cutting edge of new innovations in both amenity and services. I developed new services from research stage, contract specification, board approval, through tendering, and project implementation.
In recent years, much effort was concentrated on developing not only the amenity and facility levels but also maintaining a competitive advantage through meeting and helping to define nationally recognised management standards in addition to first class student support throughout the residential experience.
In my current role I have continued to be involved in service and efficiency improvements and have been pleased to see occupancy levels increase from around 80% to over 100%.
Training
Unipol is the UK national trainer in student housing and I was fully involved in the training programme particularly relating to student support and discipline, management standards and maintenance.
Education and Qualifications
I hold a first class Bachelor of Arts with honours degree in Housing Studies. I was also elected a Fellow of the UK Chartered Institute of Housing.
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Note: All the views expressed on this website and my associated twitter accounts or facebook are my own and do not represent the views of my employer nor am I claiming to represent them or their views. This is one of the reasons I do not name my employer even though lots of people know or can guess from the information provided.
