New opportunities in familiar surroundings
Category: Success Stories
Publish date: 02/09/2021
About us
BJF Group is a multi-division building solutions company headquartered in Maidstone, Kent and operating nationwide. Whether transforming tired and ineffective spaces, maintaining and upgrading high-security buildings or responding to wider corporate objectives, our flexibility, innovation and understanding of our customers’ individual needs ensures that we create solutions that inspire.
The Group, made up of six core divisions, gives clients a complete turnkey service to build, manage and maintain their spaces and the services that bring them to life.
Many of our clients require us to work within secure environments – something that is second nature to ex-Service personnel. These environments include MoD sites, with one of our largest clients being Amey Defence, for whom we have a long-standing Facilities Management contract covering a host of Army Barracks in Kent, London and the South East.
Case Study
To give you an insight into what it’s like for a Veteran joining BJF Group, we caught up with Darren Wilkes who went from Serviceman to Sparky when he joined BJF Group’s Facilities Management Division in 2020 - following 23 years in the Army serving in the Royal Artillery.
“In May 2020 A BJF Group Project Manager contacted me and invited me for an interview. During the interview we decided that the best course of action was for me to join BJF Group in a work placement position and in July I began working for the Facilities Management division and met the rest of the team. In September I was thrilled to receive an employment offer and happily accepted.
"My interview with BJF Group was my first ever job interview, so as you can imagine I was pretty nervous as I arrived at our Headquarters.
"The interviewer, almost instantly, made me feel welcomed and helped to ease my nerves as he explained how the different divisions were organised and how they worked within the company. He recognised my relative lack of experience at working outside of the military bubble and helped to formulate the work placement plan to aid my transition out of the Army.
"Once I met the remainder of the FM Division, I was in no doubt that BJF Group was the place for me. My team have been extremely welcoming and have vast experience and electrical knowledge which has helped me to expand my electrical abilities in the short time I have been here.
"The ability to learn new skills from them, the familiar surroundings of the MOD sites in which I work, and the expert leadership I’ve benefitted from has cemented my decision to work for the BJF Group.”
Darren has now been with the company for over a year and has gone from strength to strength whilst still working in familiar surroundings - owing to his role on BJF’s multi-million-pound MoD Facilities Management Contract for Amey Defence.
Opportunities at BJF Group
We have a whole host of current opportunities available across BJF Group, many of which are ideally suited to someone looking to transition into a career in the built environment. And so we’re working with the Career Transition Partnership to help Service leavers transition smoothly form the Armed Forces into employment with us.
Our current vacancies listed on the Career Transition Partnership’s online job portal, RightJob are:
N388783 – Fire Door Installer/Fire Stopper
N388775 – Gas Engineer
N388779 – Project Manager