Position Summary

The Senior Director EMEA Real Estate & Facilities Leader is the senior Real Estate and Facilities executive responsible for Vertiv’s portfolio and facilities operations across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

The role serves as the primary regional partner to EMEA business and operations leadership, translating business strategy into integrated real estate, workplace, facilities, and portfolio plans. The position is accountable for ensuring Vertiv’s EMEA facilities support growth, manufacturing operations, engineering, employees, customers, and long-term business objectives while optimizing cost, operational resilience, risk, and portfolio performance.

The Senior Director provides leadership across real estate strategy and transactions, facilities management, portfolio planning, workplace and occupancy, lifecycle planning, operating cost management, capital prioritization, and regional governance.

The role leads through a combination of direct reports, matrixed resources, and third-party service providers and is expected to exercise significant independent judgment across a geographically diverse and operationally complex portfolio.

Key Responsibilities Regional Real Estate & Facilities Strategy

• Develop and lead the EMEA Real Estate & Facilities strategy in alignment with Vertiv’s global business objectives and Global Real Estate strategy.
• Serve as the senior regional advisor to business and operations leadership on real estate, facilities, workplace, capacity, and location decisions.
• Translate growth plans, manufacturing strategy, workforce requirements, engineering needs, and business forecasts into short-, medium-, and long-term portfolio strategies.
• Proactively identify portfolio risks, capacity constraints, lease events, operational vulnerabilities, and opportunities for optimization.
• Balance cost, speed, flexibility, operational requirements, employee needs, and risk when developing recommendations.
• Ensure regional plans align with global Real Estate & Facilities standards, governance, and financial objectives.

Business Partnership & Executive Leadership

• Establish strong partnerships with EMEA Operations, Finance, HR, Engineering, Supply Chain, EHS, Legal, Security, IT, and other functional leaders.
• Serve as the primary escalation point for significant regional Real Estate & Facilities matters.
• Provide clear, data-driven recommendations to regional and global executives.
• Challenge business requirements constructively where alternative real estate or facilities solutions can provide better enterprise value.
• Facilitate decisions involving competing priorities, significant investment, operational risk, or cross-country considerations.
• Represent EMEA Real Estate & Facilities in regional leadership discussions, strategic planning activities, and investment reviews.

Portfolio Strategy & Real Estate Transactions

• Provide regional oversight of real estate portfolio strategy and major transactions across EMEA.
• Ensure transaction strategies are aligned with broader business and portfolio objectives rather than treated as isolated lease events.
• Oversee major lease renewals, relocations, expansions, consolidations, acquisitions, dispositions, build-to-suit opportunities, and other strategic transactions.
• Provide direction and governance to the EMEA Real Estate Transaction Manager and third-party brokerage partners.
• Review and challenge significant transaction recommendations, financial analyses, negotiation strategies, and business cases.
• Ensure transactions deliver appropriate flexibility, economics, operational support, and risk protection.
• Support strategic site selection and market evaluation activities in partnership with Global Real Estate leadership and specialist resources.

Facilities Management & Operational Performance

• Provide regional leadership for Facilities Management across EMEA manufacturing, warehouse, engineering, office, and other operational facilities.
• Establish clear expectations for facility reliability, maintenance, workplace services, compliance, cost management, and customer service.
• Lead and support country and sub-regional Facilities leaders responsible for day-to-day owner-side governance.
• Ensure critical building systems and infrastructure are appropriately maintained and lifecycle risks are identified and addressed.
• Promote preventive and predictive maintenance, asset management, condition assessment, and long-range lifecycle planning.
• Ensure Facilities organizations effectively govern outsourced and co-sourced service providers rather than duplicating provider execution.
• Escalate and address material facility risks that could affect safety, production, business continuity, customers, or employees.

Manufacturing & Operational Real Estate

• Maintain particular focus on real estate and facility requirements supporting manufacturing, engineering, laboratory, warehouse, and supply-chain operations.
• Partner with Operations to understand capacity, utility, infrastructure, adjacency, logistics, and expansion requirements.
• Ensure real estate decisions account for manufacturing continuity, power and utility requirements, labor availability, logistics, customer needs, and future expansion.
• Support evaluation of greenfield, brownfield, build-to-suit, expansion, and consolidation opportunities.
• Ensure appropriate Facilities involvement in development, design, commissioning, turnover, and operational-readiness activities.

Portfolio Planning & Optimization

• Maintain a comprehensive view of the EMEA portfolio, including location strategy, lease events, utilization, business growth, condition, risk, and cost.
• Lead periodic regional portfolio reviews and identify opportunities for consolidation, expansion, relocation, disposition, or renegotiation.
• Develop and maintain multi-year portfolio plans aligned with business forecasts.
• Partner with Workplace and Occupancy resources to evaluate capacity and utilization where appropriate.
• Drive solutions that reduce trapped capacity, improve flexibility, and optimize total occupancy cost without compromising business requirements.
• Ensure leases and investments support Vertiv’s desired level of portfolio flexibility.

Capital Planning & Project Governance

• Partner with Global Capital Projects leadership to establish EMEA capital priorities and ensure investments align with portfolio strategy.
• Participate in project business cases, scope development, design reviews, and key project stage gates.
• Provide regional business context and escalation support for major projects.
• Ensure Facilities requirements, maintainability, lifecycle costs, operational readiness, and turnover requirements are incorporated into capital projects.
• Support prioritization of lifecycle, risk, compliance, and capacity investments across the region.
• Provide matrix leadership and escalation support to Capital Project resources working within EMEA.

Financial Management & Value Creation

• Lead regional Real Estate & Facilities financial planning and performance.
• Develop and manage regional operating and capital forecasts in partnership with Finance.
• Drive cost reduction, cost avoidance, productivity, and portfolio optimization opportunities.
• Ensure financial decisions consider total cost of occupancy and lifecycle economics rather than isolated transaction or construction costs.
• Review major supplier costs, proposals, change requests, and investment recommendations.
• Identify opportunities to create enterprise value through sourcing, portfolio actions, operating improvements, and improved asset planning.
• Maintain disciplined cost management while ensuring operational and business risks are appropriately addressed.

Supplier & Service Provider Governance

• Provide regional governance of significant Real Estate & Facilities service providers.
• Ensure third-party resources operate against clearly defined scopes, service levels, performance measures, and commercial expectations.
• Review provider performance and drive corrective action where required.
• Hold providers accountable for technical quality, responsiveness, compliance, cost, reporting, and continuous improvement.
• Determine when local versus regional sourcing models provide the greatest value.
• Support major sourcing, RFP, mobilization, and supplier-transition activities.

Risk, Compliance & Resilience

• Ensure Real Estate & Facilities risks are appropriately identified, quantified, prioritized, and mitigated.
• Partner with EHS, Security, Legal, Insurance/Risk, and Operations on facility-related compliance and resilience matters.
• Ensure country-specific regulatory and statutory requirements are incorporated into facilities programs.
• Support business continuity and resilience planning for critical facilities and infrastructure.
• Establish appropriate escalation and response mechanisms for significant facility incidents.
• Maintain regional visibility to deferred maintenance, infrastructure vulnerabilities, environmental conditions, and other material portfolio risks.

Leadership & Organizational Development

• Lead, coach, and develop EMEA Real Estate & Facilities professionals.
• Establish clear accountability across regional, sub-regional, country, and site roles.
• Build an organization capable of supporting rapid business growth while maintaining disciplined governance.
• Promote collaboration across Real Estate, Facilities, Capital Projects, Workplace, Lease Administration, and other Global Real Estate sub-functions.
• Ensure regional resources operate as strategic owner-side professionals rather than simply administering vendors.
• Develop succession plans and strengthen technical, commercial, analytical, and leadership capability across the organization.
• Lead through influence across matrixed teams, business partners, and third-party providers.

Global Governance & Continuous Improvement

• Actively participate in the Global Real Estate leadership team.
• Support development and implementation of global Real Estate & Facilities standards, policies, tools, and governance.
• Ensure EMEA adoption of global facility standards and operating requirements.
• Share regional best practices and lessons learned across the global organization.
• Support global portfolio, risk, cost, supplier, and performance initiatives.
• Maintain consistent regional reporting, scorecards, and executive visibility.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Real Estate, Business, Finance, Engineering, Architecture, Facilities Management, or a related field.
• Approximately 12–15+ years of progressive corporate real estate, facilities, portfolio, or related leadership experience.
• Significant experience leading complex, multi-country Real Estate and/or Facilities portfolios.
• Demonstrated leadership within a manufacturing, industrial, engineering, technology, or other operationally intensive environment.
• Strong understanding of commercial real estate transactions, portfolio strategy, facilities operations, lifecycle planning, and capital investment.
• Demonstrated experience leading and developing professional teams.
• Experience managing significant outsourced or co-sourced Real Estate and Facilities service providers.
• Strong financial and analytical capability, including operating budgets, capital planning, business cases, NPV/financial evaluation, and cost optimization.
• Demonstrated ability to advise senior executives and influence decisions across business and functional organizations.
• Strong commercial judgment and negotiation skills.
• Ability to operate effectively across multiple countries, cultures, business units, and time zones.
• Excellent executive-level written and verbal communication skills.
• Fluency in English.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience leading Real Estate & Facilities for a large multinational corporate occupier.
• Extensive experience supporting manufacturing, engineering, laboratory, warehouse, and office environments.
• Broad experience across European markets and additional exposure to the Middle East and Africa.
• Experience with significant greenfield, expansion, consolidation, and portfolio-transformation programs.
• Experience with integrated facilities management and outsourced service-delivery models.
• Experience establishing portfolio governance, facility standards, lifecycle programs, or regional operating models.
• Additional European language capability is beneficial.
• Professional qualification such as MRICS, IFMA CFM, MCR, CCIM, SIOR, or equivalent is beneficial but not required.

Core Competencies

• Enterprise leadership
• Strategic thinking
• Commercial judgment
• Financial acumen
• Real estate and facilities expertise
• Executive influence
• Business partnership
• Organizational leadership
• Decision making
• Risk management
• Negotiation
• Data-driven decision making
• Cross-cultural leadership
• Managing complexity and ambiguity
• Developing talent
• Accountability and ownership
• Bias for action

Measures of Success

• Alignment of the EMEA portfolio with business growth and operating strategy.
• Reliability and operational performance of critical EMEA facilities.
• Real estate and facilities cost performance versus plan.
• Delivery of portfolio optimization, savings, and cost-avoidance opportunities.
• Quality and timeliness of strategic real estate and investment recommendations.
• Effectiveness of regional portfolio and lifecycle planning.
• Performance and accountability of third-party service providers.
• Execution of key lease events and transactions without unnecessary business risk.
• Successful operational readiness and handover of major projects.
• Reduction and effective management of facility and portfolio risks.
• Adoption of global Real Estate & Facilities standards and governance.
• Stakeholder satisfaction with Real Estate & Facilities support.
• Development, engagement, and effectiveness of the EMEA Real Estate & Facilities team.

 

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