James Breckon
Director of Estates

James joined Warwick as Director of Estates in October 2014. Overseeing all the University real estate across two main campuses, on the outskirts of Coventry and close to Stratford Upon Avon, he takes responsibility for the Capital Programme, Campus operations (maintenance and facilities), Student Accommodation and Transport mobility. He serves as a member of the University’s senior officer team, reporting directly to the Group Finance Director, and takes a lead role in environmental sustainability.

Trained as a professional engineer, with an MSc and exec MBA, he has lead consultancy, construction and services businesses in the UK across multiple market sectors. He has a significant track record in collaborative and integrated design and construction, creating and delivering built environments within research, development, manufacturing, healthcare, education and commercial organisations.

He leads on the real estate strategy and sustainable, inclusive placemaking for the University campuses.

James's previous role was Director at Balfour Beatty Heathrow Airport, responsible for the design and delivery of the £300M development programme across terminals 1, 2 and 4. Before this, he worked within blue chip public limited companies as a Director Parsons Brinckerhoff (WSP), Morgan Ashurst and AMEC (Wood Group).

Kevin Edwards
Chief Finance Officer

Kevin's role in Estates is to lead the Finance, Procurement and the Assurance & Property teams of the department. He currently also has oversight responsibility for the Estate management of Wellesbourne Campus and contributes to the strategic development of the campus.

He's a qualified accountant and has worked in the building industry since he was 18. Having trained as an accountant in a major PLC construction and contracting business he progressed through the ranks until his move to a regional house builder where he took up the role of Finance Director at the age of 31.

Since then he has also worked as a consultant to a European Cement and Aggregates business, where he was team leader in projects, including implementation of an ERP system and a change management programme for a move to a shared services set up. Whilst working for a Registered Social Landlord he acted as a consultant in setting up the financial reporting of a new self-build construction arm, and then worked as an Operational Finance Director for 2 Registered Social Landlords within a Group structure.

Kevin works very closely with the Central Finance Team in reporting through the Financial Governance of FPSC and FGPC in relations to the overall Capital Plan and the annual plans of both Estates and Accommodation to deliver continuous improvements both financially and operationally in the services we deliver.

Parvez Islam
Director of Environmental Sustainability

Parvez is responsible for the implementation of the strategic plan for sustainable travel at the University, which has emerged from the recent Masterplan activities. This includes the long-term strategic infrastructure opportunities of road and rail improvements as well as the more immediate transport improvements required at the campus.

Parvez joins the University having been responsible for transport and parking at London Luton Airport. He developed and implemented innovative sustainable transport solutions which improved the customer journey whilst catering for the growth of the airport and ensuring it remained commercially viable.

The current Keep Campus Moving team report to Parvez and he will oversee the campus logistics planning, wayfinding, cycling, public transport and car park policy and planning in conjunction with other functions within Estates and other University departments, particularly WMG, Security, Communications and Commercial.

David Hammond
Capital Programme Director

David is responsible for the realisation of the Capital Development Programme at the University, working with a multidisciplinary team of Project Managers, Surveyors and Designers to transform our campus.

He has extensive experience of leading multidisciplinary teams on a diverse range of complex projects, and has been responsible for the creative direction, technical and commercial performance of integrated design businesses, and delivery teams through all work stages, from concept to completion.

David has experience in a variety of market sectors, including education, commercial office, residential, pharmachem, research, industrial, manufacturing, healthcare, transport and defence, and has worked both in the UK and internationally.

David is a passionate believer in the benefits of multidisciplinary design and integrated project delivery, with a keen interests in the use of technology and “offsite” manufacture. He aims to ensure the consistent safe delivery of coordinated solutions to procurement and construction teams, in order to maximise programme, cost and quality benefits.

Wendy Roberts
Director of Staff and Student Accommodation

Wendy currently manages a team responsible for income of £45m with operating costs of £34.2m with a team of 675 staff. Her teams manage 10,000 on and off-campus rooms and clean the vast majority of the University buildings. She's been integral in the project teams developing an additional 1,300 student bedrooms on the campus.

She is an experienced Commercial Manager with a successful history of working in the higher education industry, skilled in customer service, project management, business planning, coaching and strategic planning.

Wendy has managed large scale facilities teams in complex operations across the country, including facilities management of Cleaning, Porters, Switchboard, Car Parking, Conference Reception and Student Reception.

Before joining Warwick, Wendy was the Site Manager for ISS a leading global provider of facility services where she managed the contracted out services of Cleaning, Portering, Switchboard and Car Parking for Singleton Hospital. Wendy also completed her MBA at Warwick.

Charlotte Lewis
Head of Strategic Programmes and Governance

Charlotte Lewis joined the University of Warwick Estates Team in 2018, having previously held positions at the Universities of Oxford, Southampton Solent, Gloucestershire and Oxford Brookes.

She has degrees in Civil Engineering, Architecture and Operations Management and started her career in the manufacturing industry. She has been making a difference in Higher Education for over 15 years, joining the sector by initially teaching Business, then both operationally and as a consultant, in Estates strategic planning roles.

At Warwick she is interested in delivering change through detailed analysis, creative thinking and collaborative decision making and enjoys using visual thinking to solve problems. Charlotte is an advocate for the empowerment of individuals and continuous improvement to deliver on strategic objectives.

Duncan Stiles
Head of Assurance, Risk and Property

Duncan works alongside the Estates Management Team to systematically make significant improvements to support operational and projects health, safety and compliance practices. He and his team of specialist Health and Safety professionals conduct regular audits and reviews for reassurance of compliance across the Estates Office activities.

He has over twenty years of experience working and managing public sector buildings and property portfolios, having variety of roles including Building Surveyor, Property Manager and Facilities Manager. His experience has stood him well to fulfil his current role at Warwick.

Duncan has been responsible for setting up and implementing the Estates Strategic and Operational Health, Safety and Wellbeing Group, University Water, Statutory Inspection and Asbestos Management Groups to provide the framework to ensure compliance for the coordination of activities related to the management, procurement, development, maintenance, training requirements and safe use of systems.

At National level, Duncan is the Secretary of the Association of Universities Directors of Estates (AUDE) Estates Management Group and is a member of the Universities Safety and Health Association (USHA) Compliance Sub-group. These positions have enabled him to network with colleagues from other universities to share best practice within the university sector.

Steve Twynholm
Operations Director

Steve is responsible for Estates Operations which includes maintenance, waste management, customer service desk, information management, furniture, post and grounds and gardens.

Having spent the last ten years at Coventry University in a variety of senior leadership roles within Estates he has a deep understanding of the challenges facing Higher Education and what is required to lead an effective Estates function in a large complex organisation.

Prior to this Steve worked for a variety of public sector organisations in the North-West of England including the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA) working on emergency planning and public consultations.

Steve brings experience and expertise in customer service, process and performance improvement at a time when customer expectations are increasing and the need to provide value for money has never been greater.

Alan Warwood
Head of Facilities

Alan manages a team responsible for post, the Student Post Room, transport, portering, waste & recycling across campus, grounds, gardens & sports fields, facilities projects, furniture & equipment and the Estates Service Desk. Alan also manages the Building & Facilities Managers.

Alan has over 25 years of experience in Operational Management, spanning across a variety of sectors, in both the UK and overseas. He joined Warwick in 2014 and has been instrumental in driving operational improvement across the University on behalf of the Estates Office.

Previously, Alan worked for AXA UK as their Operations Manager with responsibility for multiple sites in UK and India, before moving into the public sector.

He has extensive relationship management experience, and has developed and implemented the Estates Office stakeholder management strategy with significant success, as well as being responsible for the successful delivery of several large University-wide projects during his time at Warwick.

Please visit here for more information on the Facilities team.

Heather Loosemore
Head of Maintenance

Heather joined us in January 2021 as Head of Maintenance having previously worked as Assistant Director (Maintenance and Operations) at Coventry University. She is an operations and maintenance professional with experience of project design & delivery, which brings many benefits to the manner in which University buildings and assets are managed throughout their lifecycle.

As a Chartered Engineer she gained degrees in Building Services Engineering, Engineering Business Management and PhD in Plant Control Strategies. She has worked in the Building Services sector since leaving school gaining a breadth of experience working in many different roles such as contractor, designer, and client . She has been able to work on an interesting variety of building types and projects, ranging from large technical infrastructure projects at major national research institutes, to delivering the technical sustainability strategy for a UK University.

Heather will be making sure we continue our journey to full statutory compliance through the best use of technology and data and modernising our systems and processes to ensure we deliver a world-class maintenance service to the University.