Elizabeth Thornton

My current role at Colliers International covers a broad range of responsibilities, which I have summarised below.

1. Coordination – support the overall delivery of the Real Estate Management (REM) division by proactively identifying potential issues, working with team members to address these issues, escalating significant matters to the leadership team, and coordinating regular meetings and associated activities.

For example:

• monitoring building compliance across the portfolio to ensure alignment with the Australian Safety Standards, identifying areas of risk and working with the relevant team members to resolve any issues.
• preparation for the whole of team meeting in support of the Director REM (bi-monthly).
• preparation for and facilitation of the regular Facilities Management (FM) meeting (fortnightly).

2. Management – support the onboarding and staff training requirements across REM, as well as directly manage a team of three staff.

For example:

• host whole REM training sessions to ensure training is up to date across the division.
• performance management for three staff members, including mentoring, goal setting, performance review and leave approvals.
• manage the onboarding system, including arranging system access, maintaining welcome packs (e.g. overseeing the buddy system, regular touch points as part of onboarding process), training on in house systems and processes, developing the welcome email and providing write up for the marketing team to use on social media platforms.

3. Procurement – Manage the procurement process, including issuing the scope of services in conjunction with the facilities manager, development of tender documents, management of the tender process, evaluation of tender responses and recommendation of the preferred contractor.

For example:

• procurement of fire protection services and alarm monitoring, HVAC & BMS maintenance, hydraulic maintenance, electrical maintenance and cleaning & caretaking services for the Civic Quarter 1 (CQ1) building.
• procurement of similar building services for the Doma portfolio, Morris Property Group, Challenger Life Nominees and more.
• assist in the development and application of the evaluation matrix to support this procurement activity, and then tailoring its application to each procurement.

4. Contract management – support the facilities managers within the REM division to manage the compliance of contractors against the Australian Safety Standards and their other contractual obligations.

For example:

• ensuring compliance features are current and do not fall overdue (e.g. having fire extinguishers are tested every 6-months).
• coordinating the facilities managers to organise property risk assessments (PRAs) as per the obligation under the property management agreement.

5. Business improvement – proactively contribute to the continuous improvement of the REM division within Canberra, and more broadly for the REM function across Australia.

For example:

• systems testing and implementation, such as being the central user testing point for numerous national system rollout initiatives (e.g. Clarity, which is the current operations management portal).
• development and rollout of business processes and frameworks, such as working directly with the national procurement manager to develop the new procurement process for all Colliers procurement nation-wide.

6. Business support – support the day-to-day delivery of REM activities.

For example:

• new contractor set up within the relevant systems.
• overseeing invoice processing, including ensuring correct reference numbers are applied and linked to correct budget codes, chasing/investigating overdue or outstanding accounts, raising of sundry fees.
• entry of monthly reporting figures and data.
• assist in formatting and ensuring documents comply with company standards.
• assist the team in writing pieces for social media/marketing tools.

The role primarily included:

• speaking with customers to understand and resolve any issues.
• generating a report for managers including executive management and coordinating a response from the appropriate manager ensuring all problems are resolved.
• making up to 60 courtesy calls to customers per day across four service departments, after they had their car serviced to focus on customer retention and ensuring customer satisfaction.
• conducting monthly telephone audits to ensure sales staff follow up with their customers on a regular basis.
• preparing monthly reports for management meetings to track and provide comparisons regarding customer retention, satisfaction and problems. This includes identifying trends and highlighting serious issues requiring improvement within the organisation.
• training new staff on how to use the required computer programs and company processes.
• taking calls from the public and processing their requests accordingly.
• filing and organising of documents for relevant supervisors.
• maintaining filing systems including both electronic and hard copy systems.