Responsibilities
As an estates manager, you'll need to:
- Manage an estate - which may include a mixture of farm or rural land, commercial or residential buildings, care or hospital settings
- Manage staff and any volunteers
- Foster a collaborative working approach, with internal or external staff
- Manage contractors employed for a specific purpose, such as tree surgeons or building services engineers
- Organise repairs and maintenance
- Project-manage buildings and renovations
- Plan, commission and manage the work of contractors
- Carry out financial planning for a project and control the budget
- Redevelop a site, possibly for preparation for a different use
- Deal with contracts for various aspects of the estate
- Oversee the development of the estate, to make sure it's being effectively run to meet the estate's objectives
- Carry out community engagement work - inform and engage the local community to ensure positive visitor numbers and that facilities are as well utilised as possible
- Work with the landowners/senior leadership of the business to keep them up to date on developments or potential issues
- Keep up to date with legislation and regulations that affect the estate
- Carry out marketing activities - this will often include social media communication aimed at building a positive image, improving public perception and encouraging community engagement.
What to Expect:
- You'll work both in an office and out on the estate.
- You'll need to balance numerous, and sometimes contradictory issues, such as increasing the profitability of an estate without spending any money.
- The work involves planning to meet both short term and longer-term needs.
- You'll need to be both practically-minded way and strategic in seeing the overall picture of a project.
- Estates management roles are available all over the country and overseas. The type of estate will influence the location of a rural or built-up environment.
Qualifications
There are no set requirements to get into this work. Although you can get into estates management without a degree, estate managers will often have a relevant degree, HND or foundation degree or considerable experience built up as a technician before moving into this role.
Because of the variety of the role, any of the following degree subjects can lead into different estates manager roles:
- Agriculture
- Horticulture
- Estate or land management
- Surveying
- Property or facilities management
- Construction management.