Meet Karen!
Since joining facilities management in 2009, Karen Aitken has gained a new role, significant experience and has become one of the first people in her industry to complete a national scholarship.
Karen began her career in the council as a mobile toilet attendant providing vital cleaning services across several county facilities. She has since progressed to become an Assistant Area Officer working alongside Area Officers to manage staff across a wide range of services including cleaning, catering, janitorial and caretaking. She regularly carries out audits including checking compliance with organisational and legislative requirements, responding to changes in the delivery of the service and recommending ways to increase efficiency including developing new procedures and working practices.
Karen recently completed the first Assist FM Cleaning Scholarship. Assist FM works to promote best practice in the facilities management industry. The scholarship programme offered a blend of in-person and online sessions tailored to meet the current challenges in local authority cleaning services. Karen said, “I really enjoyed the scholarship. I learnt loads from the course around how volumes of products we should use, how much stock we should have and also how to measure a room to assess how long it should take to clean.”
The students were challenged with creating a tender for a building - detailing what machines to use, staff numbers and shift patterns, how many products and the overall price for the service. “I found this really hard as I had never done anything like this before,” admits Karen. “We had a few online Teams meetings regarding this part. I thought everyone else seemed to be doing ok going by the group chat, so I said that I must be stupid as I felt it was really hard and wasn’t sure what I was to do. I’m so glad I did, as it turned out everyone felt the same!”
“My senior officer Loraine Faulds was very helpful making sure I was putting time aside for this course and was always asking how I was getting on and offered help if I needed it.”
Since completing the course, Karen has started applying some of this learning to her job. Initially, she has chosen two of the schools she is responsible for and, using the floorplans, is calculating areas to make sure work is fairly distributed amongst the team as well as undertaking an audit of the stock.
Karen loves the variety in her work: “Every day is different, there’s also a mix of being in schools, in the office or working from home.”
Outside of her work duties, Karen is a keen bowler and has represented Midlothian on more than one occasion at the Scottish national championships, proving she’s a star both in and out of the workplace.
“We’re really proud of Karen and her achievements with the scholarship, and what a valuable contribution she’s making to help us run an effective and efficient facilities service as well as being a great colleague” said Lorraine Faulds, Senior Officer, Facilities Management.
Congratulations Karen!
