Royal Opera House - Estates & Facilities Director

Royal Opera House - Estates & Facilities Director

Estates & Facilities Director Candidate Information Pack

​Estates & Facilities Director

Contents Page

About the Royal Opera House 4 Equality, Diversity & Inclusion 19

Our Vision, Our Values 6

The Estate 7

The Role 8

Application Process 20

2

Job Description & Person Specification 10

Sustainability 18

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About the Royal Opera House

Home to The Royal Ballet, The Royal Opera and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, the Royal Opera House brings together world-class performers and trailblazing creative teams to share unforgettable performances with audiences near and far. Our theatres are in London’s Covent Garden, but our work is accessed and experienced across the UK and globally through tours, cinema seasons, free outdoor screenings, radio broadcasts, TV programmes and on Royal Opera House Stream. Over the course of the pandemic, we curated the #OurHouseToYourHouse programme made up of nine live-streamed concerts and 38 full-length streamed productions from our archives. Full-length content was viewed over 15 million times in 183 countries, and was paired with a host of cultural highlights in partnership with the BBC, Sky Arts, Marquee T and Netflix. In September, we returned for our first full Season since 2019, sharing a packed programme of world premieres, landmark new productions and returning favourites. Since then, we have expanded our audience through a flagship Young ROH scheme, returned to live cinema relays, and extended our national impact through an ambitious curriculum-linked programme for schools, specially designed to ignite creativity, broaden participation and diversify the future of opera and ballet. We realise our responsibility and obligation to reduce our impact on the environment, and are committed to net zero emissions by 2035 for Scopes 1 and 2, and to setting targets for our Scope 3 emissions by 2025.

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We are one of the busiest theatres in the world, delivering over 400 performances and around 1,350 learning events each year, employing 1,000 permanent staff and generating a turnover of £142 million and attracting 1.5m attendances in Covent Garden and in cinemas, further extended via broadcasting, digital activity and collaboration with touring companies. We operate over three sites, our main Grade 1 listed Covent Garden theatre, our workshops in Purfleet and scenery warehouse at Aberdare. You can find out more by reading our latest annual report. To support our future plans we have decided to create a new Executive level role to provide leadership for all aspects of our built estates, to lead on a significant capital investment programme aimed at improving our infrastructure, back of house systems and stage technology; to lead & champion environmental sustainability across the organisation and crucially to develop our roadmap to carbon net-zero. We are seeking an individual with a proven track record of leading complex, multifaceted refurbishment programmes, across live, high ft fall, operational environments. The role would suit an individual that is motivated to lead a highly complex investment programme across one of London truly iconic landmark buildings.

This is an exciting opportunity to join the ROH and help us develop our estate and site facilities for generations to come.

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Our Vision, Values and Priorities

We believe the art forms of opera and ballet can both entertain and offer deep emotional and intellectual fulfilment: they are a direct link to the combined experiences of past generations and a lens on the contemporary world. Engaging with opera and ballet has the potential to enhance the wellbeing of individuals and communities. Extraordinary, world-class performances are at the absolute heart of our vision and we especially prioritise investment in new work.

The Royal Opera House is dedicated to nurturing, creating and sharing astonishing, world- class opera, ballet and theatre craft. We are driven by an urge to deepen our impact – our impact on the continuing development

of opera and ballet as living, breathing art forms, and our impact on people in the UK and overseas.

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The Estate

The Estates of the Royal Opera House comprises three buildings: the main site in Covent Garden includes a 2,000+ seated theatre which dates from 1858, and redeveloped stage and newly developed rehearsal rooms, dressing rooms, workshops offices and ancillary spaces sating from a large-scale capital project completed in 1999, and a second theatre and refreshed front of house spaces delivered via the Open Project in 2018. The ROH’s Production Workshop and Costume Centre are located in Thurrock, Essex and a 14,000m2 sore in Aberdare, Wales.

Together the facilities enable the organisation to deliver a complex and busy production schedule and support the work of 1,000s staff, artists and creative people to stage opera and ballet to exacting standards.

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The Role

The Estates & Facilities Director provides strategic leadership and effective management of the Facilities and Estates of the ROH with responsibility for the efficient and effective running of our buildings and their services. This new senior role has responsibility for providing the right environment and facilities to support the organisation’s people and artistic output taking into account safety, compliance, sustainability, cost-control and positive customer service. The post holder will play a central role in further developing our Estates Plan to upgrade core infrastructure whilst improving our building emissions and delivering improvements in comfort, usability, accessibility and flexibility. This ambitious plan will need to be implemented whilst the daily artistic schedule continues, and the Facilities & Estates Director will be required to plan and deliver a programme of work around a busy theatre and production house. This is a senior Executive team role with organisational responsibility for ensuring our commitment to environmental sustainability and crucially our to reaching net zero by 2035 (with an earlier target of 2030) for scope 1 and 2 emissions and to set targets on scope 3 emissions by 2025.

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You will need to have a proven track record at a senior management level with a:

• Professionally qualified engineer/ building professional, or proven competence through practical experience.

• Demonstrable experience of managing and developing an estate (including Grade 1 listed assets) with the ability to drive innovation and identify opportunities alongside an understanding of their practical implementation within a demanding daily operation.

• Experience and enthusiasm for leading the sustainability agenda within Facilities and Estates and across the organisation.

• Proven track record of compliance with and understanding of relevant Health, Safety and Environmental legislation.

• Experience of running a multi-year capital project with interdependent programmes of work.

• Demonstrable experience in a leadership role in a large or multi-site organisation. with an ability to drive performance and innovation.

The Royal Opera House is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment in which everyone can thrive. We welcome applications from those who are currently under represented in our workforce; in particular those who are ethnically diverse and/or disabled. As a Disability Confident Employer, we guarantee to interview all disabled applicants who meet the essential minimum criteria for our vacancies.

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Job Description

Title: Reports to: Direct Reports:

Estates & Facilities Director Director of Operations Head of Facilities; Environmental Sustainability Manager; Special Projects Programme Manager; Renewal Programme Manager (Technical);

Background

The Estates of the Royal Opera House comprises three buildings: the main site in Covent Garden includes a 2,000+ seated theatre which dates from 1858, and redeveloped stage and newly developed rehearsal rooms, dressing rooms, workshops offices and ancillary spaces sating from a large-scale capital project completed in 1999, and a second theatre and refreshed front of house spaces delivered via the Open Project in 2018. The ROH’s Production Workshop and Costume Centre are located in Thurrock, Essex and a 14,000m2 sore in Aberdare, Wales. Together the facilities enable the organisation to deliver a complex and busy production schedule and support the work of 1,000s staff, artists and creative people to stage opera and ballet to exacting standards.

The Royal Opera House has committed to reaching net zero by 2035 (with an earlier target of 2030) for scope 1 and 2 emissions and to set targets on scope 3 emissions by 2025.

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Main purpose of the job

The purpose of this new role is to ensure that ROH, at its 3 sites, has the buildings and estate infrastructure it needs to meet its current and future needs. We are about to embark on a period of significant capital investment with a programme of works aimed at improving our building and stage infrastructure. These investments are a first step to modernising our back of house estate and investing in sustainability. We intend to see a material change in the quality of the built environment for our performances, artists and staff. Alongside this programme of capital investment, we need to significantly improve our approach to planned preventative maintenance. This will require new management systems, investment in the renewal and replacement of our core engineering systems and overseeing a complex programme of works whilst continuing to deliver our exacting schedule of rehearsals and performances. To meet these challenges, we have decided to create a new senior role on the Executive team to provide leadership for all aspects of our built estates, lead on environmental sustainability and crucially develop our roadmap to carbon net-zero. As a member of the Executive team the job holder is expected to contribute to the strategic development and sound management of the organisation in collaboration with other Executive team members.

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Estate and Facilities Management

• To develop and deliver a programme of major and minor capital projects working closely and collaboratively with the Executive team, colleagues and other key stakeholders providing the key strategic interface for Estates, FM and Capital programmes.

• To lead on the development of overall estates strategies across all three sites.

• To review and further develop the delivery of cost effective and high-quality facilities management services including planned, preventative and reactive maintenance via the management and motivation of our Hard FM provider. This includes developing an effective forward (5 year) maintenance plan.

• To deliver robust management of the programme of projects across all three sites meeting, stakeholder, financial, operational and maintenance requirements.

• Act as principle advisor on all facilities and estates matters to the Executive team and provide professional advice and guidance on Estates matters.

• To coordinate and maintain external stakeholder relations with respect to our Grade 1 listed building status.

• To lead, develop and effectively resource a team of directly employed staff, external PMs and contractor staff with responsibilities crossing the delivery of a programme of projects and facilities management to ensure that all risks are effectively managed. • Working collaboratively with our Head of Procurement, lead on the procurement for delivery of all estates and facilities contracts (projects, maintenance) which complies with applicable legislation and ROH procedures. • Lead the sustainability agenda across the organisation. Annually review set targets, monitor performance and ensure conformity to our environmental policy and commitments. Ensure accurate and timely reporting of >Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20

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