...maintaining a Historic Building
Built in 1687...and lovingly maintained daily ever since.
Prestonfield is such a quirky mix, a historic old building packed full of high technology that it can take you a while to find your way around. The surroundings are lovely, free parking is a bonus and staff lunches not bad either!
We work as an in house maintenance team and try to cover most of the skills needed to keep everything functioning well for our staff and looking great for the guests. First job of the day is to look at any maintenance requests that have been filed overnight and seeing if any problem can be sorted by us. If it isn't a skill we have in-house then we'll rely on one of our regular specialist contractors to sort it out, so it might be a call to the upholsterer, plumber or chimneysweep. If one of our technical systems has a fault then we might be working with fire alarm, air-conditioning or lift engineers or one of the engineers who look after our IT and communications systems.
Keeping Prestonfield looking special for our guests is a big priority. Painters are constantly maintaining gleaming paintwork when they are not redecorating areas during refurbishments and, with over a hundred miles of cabling and hundreds of lights and appliances, our electrician is kept busy too.
Outside are gardeners look after the acres of lawns and gardens. The hedges alone take weeks to cut and hundreds of roses mean a lot of dead heading! The gardens are increasingly busy as we start to experiment with growing some of our own salads, herbs and produce.
Whilst we've all got our own tasks, we know we need to pitch in when something bigger comes up. Christmas means everyone putting decorations together, a new suite about to open means we are all committed to meeting that deadline and a head of a Royal visit we are all likely to find ourselves with a paintbrush or garden rake in hand!
As if keeping Prestonfield up to five-star standard wasn't a big enough challenge we've also got the other properties in James Thomson's Collection to look after, so part of the day could be spent at the Witchery by the Castle or our rooftop Tower Restaurant nearby.
Our colleagues depend on us to keep things working well so they can do their own jobs and keep guests happy. Working in those back of house areas might not be a glamorous as working in a lavish suite but it's just as important to the working of the hotel.
