Our people

Chris Spencer is our Head of People Resourcing. With over 35 years of experience in recruitment, Chris is responsible for recruiting mid to senior level property experts externally for our clients and internally for Pennington Choices.

Chris manages an external recruitment practise that delivers targeted searches to resource and deliver ‘hard to fill’ permanent, interim and contract placements with clients in social housing. Chris also maintains an experienced talent pool of high calibre interim managers and directors for deployment in fixed term interim and consultancy positions.

Career highlights

• Sourced and recruited the ‘Group Managing Director’ for Liberty Group, a subsidiary of Forviva Group.
• Sourced and recruited the ‘Director of Technical Services’ for IDS Housing Association.
• Sourced and recruited three ‘Asset Management Specialists’ for Magenta Living.
• Sourced and recruited group ‘Head of Compliance’ for New Charter Housing Group.
• Sourced and recruited an ‘Operations Director’ for a niche engineering business that had been unable to source the right person for over a year.
• Placing the ‘Operations Director’ and ‘MD designate’ in a company who then became a client based on the quality of their recruitment experience.
• Director level experience managing a multi £m business.
• Devised the search strategy and delivered the recruitment of +20 senior engineers for a global manufacturing organisation, with three exercises over consecutive years worth in excess of £300k.

Qualifications

• IOH Certificate of Competence in Asbestos and Other Fibres

Dan is an asbestos operational and project management specialist. He is responsible for the delivery and overall quality of all asbestos contracts.

He has complete understanding of the fundamentals of business management and the ability to manage, develop, motivate and integrate teams.

Dan has operated within asbestos related roles for 24 years. He has developed from a surveyor performing various asbestos surveys to director-level management roles. His experience within the industry provides him with an excellent understanding of how to successfully deliver an array of asbestos services.

Qualifications

• CMI
• NVQ Business

Kerry Kelly is our Head of Operational Delivery. She oversees our customer services team and is responsible for arranging appointments, contacting residents and dealing with customer queries and complaints swiftly and sympathetically. She has extensive experience in customer services within the housing sector.

Kerry leads our customer services team and promotes good communication between residents and our surveyors. She promotes proactive working measures to increase access and maintain regular contact with her team to ensure they are familiar with our client’s requirements. Kerry works with our training manager to keep her team up to date with specific measures for working with residents, including: customer care, equality and diversity, cultural and religious sensitivity and working with at-risk and vulnerable residents.

Qualifications

• ONC Building Studies;
• HNC Building Studies;
• Diploma in Quantity Surveying.

Paul is Pennington Choices’ Head of Property Services. He has over 35 years of experience in the housing and construction industry, and is responsible for the delivery of large scale projects, including fire consultancy, energy consultancy, stock condition services, and gas and electrical services.

Paul has a broad range of experience across the housing sector, and has worked with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government as part of the Hackitt Review into the Grenfell Tower tragedy, forming part of the ‘Early Adopters Group’ to assist in the developing the industry’s response to the Hackitt review.

Qualifications

• International Certification of Enterprise Risk Management
• Master of Business Administration (MBA)
• Joint Honours Degree – English, Literature and History
• Managing Successful Programmes (MSP)
• Management of Portfolios (MoP)
• P3O
• PRINCE2 and DSDM Agile PM Practitioner

Sarah Davies is our Head of Consultancy and has spent nearly two decades working with organisations across the public and not-for-profit sectors. Starting her career with the Audit Commission before moving into strategic leadership roles in Police, Fire and Social Housing; Sarah has substantial experience in Strategic Procurement, Value for Money and leading complex and large-scale business and digital transformational change programmes and operational services.

As Assistant Director of Business Improvement at a housing provider, Sarah introduced and embedded a new Enterprise Risk Management Approach and advised in the EU procurement of a new repairs service, including an emergency procurement. During her time as Head of Strategic Change for Cheshire Constabulary and Cheshire Fire & Rescue, Sarah was the Lead Officer for Digital and Organisation Transformation and Efficiency Programmes; delivering three major collaborations/ mergers with other organisations, including the development and implementation of a back-office shared service for UK Policing (using Oracle ERP technology).

Qualifications

• BSc degree
• Member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (MRICS)

Andrew Wigfield is one of our Project Team Leaders. Andrew has over 30 years’ experience in construction consultancy. He is an established team leader on project delivery and relationship building with project partners. Over the last 20 years, he has had extensive healthcare experience through multi appointments within the NHS, developing a thorough understanding of the supply chain and development partners.

Andrew has worked as a client side quantity surveyor / cost advisor, employer’s agent, project manager, contract administrator and technical advisor. He has wide ranging skill sets and has developed a detailed understanding of construction financial and project management within the health sector, reporting to numerous primary and secondary care Clients and private sector Clients.

Qualifications

• BSc degree
• Member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (MRICS)

Doug Hill is one of our Project Team Leaders. Doug has over 35 years’ experience in construction consultancy. He is an established team leader on project delivery and relationship building with project partners. During his career, Doug has worked as a client-side quantity surveyor/cost advisor and project manager. As a result, he has a rounded understanding of the construction and development process.

Doug has worked on numerous health sector projects from refurbishments less than £100k, through to complex new build projects at £30m. He has also completed numerous NHS business case costs and quarterly reports, cash flows, life cycle costs and risk analyses on behalf of the business units within NHS estates teams becoming an integral member assisting the development of their capital strategy. Throughout his career, Doug has worked across a broad range of health institutions, including; primary care, all departments of acute hospitals and also mental health.

Doug also sits on the Procure 22 Commercial Working Group. This group meets quarterly to develop and ensure consistency within commercial and contractual aspects of the process.

Qualifications

• BSc (Hons) Construction Management;
• Chartered Construction Manager and Builder (MCIOB).

John is Pennington Choices’ Head of Project Services. He has over 20 years’ of experience delivering complex projects within a variety of sectors. During this time, he has also held a range of senior management positions within both the public and private sector.

John specialises in programme and project management, which is underpinned through the site construction management experience he gained early on in his career. His experience covers schemes within local and central government, health (NHS, NHS Property Services, Clinical Commissioning Groups, GP surgeries), higher education, further education, housing, urban regeneration and commercial.

Qualifications

• Member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors
• BSc Degree in Quantity Surveying

Mark has over 30 years’ experience in construction consultancy and is one of our Project Team Leaders. He has extensive healthcare experience through multi appointments with numerous NHS clients, developing a thorough understanding of the public sector client side estates management and project delivery role. Mark also focuses on strategic property advice, including estates strategies, business cases, feasibility / option appraisals, and continual process improvement and performance management.

Mark’s broad client side property strategy and project management experience includes; NHS / Hospitals, Private Healthcare, GP / Primary Care, HSBC Bank, Local Council (Education) and Lloyds Banking Group (formerly HBOS).