Manager - Districts + Parks - City 206 - AA7

About the Role
The role involves leading the operation and maintenance of landscapes, green spaces, and parks across the company City. This position offers an opportunity to blend horticultural expertise with operational leadership to create healthy, visually appealing outdoor environments that ensure safety and accessibility for public use.

What You’ll Do

• Lead Landscape Maintenance: Develop annual, seasonal, and weekly programs for trees, palms, shrubs, groundcover, turf, and seasonal planting, focusing on pruning, nutrition, soil improvement, integrated pest management, and replacement.
• Optimize Irrigation and Water Use: Oversee irrigation systems within the assigned asset boundaries, adapt schedules based on plant needs, seasonal conditions, and soil moisture, investigate leaks, and implement approved water-efficiency measures.
• Manage Contractor Performance: Hold service providers accountable against contractual scopes, service-level agreements, and KPIs, validate completed work, address non-conformance issues, and recommend payment certification through approved processes.
• Maintain Landscape Quality and Park Readiness: Inspect the health of planting, asset conditions, and overall presentation while coordinating with specialist teams for tree-risk assessments and collaborating with cleaning, waste, security, maintenance, and event teams to resolve public use issues.
• Support Mobilisation and Handover: Contribute to design and maintainability reviews, verify asset information including irrigation drawings, maintenance manuals, and training materials, track snags and defects, and recommend operational acceptance.
• Control Budgets and Resources: Prepare operating budgets, resource plans, and forecasts, monitor expenditure and unit costs, and coordinate teams, equipment, and specialist support, ensuring safety, plant health, and service quality are not compromised.
• Strengthen Resilience and Performance: Maintain contingency arrangements for irrigation failures, extreme weather, plant health incidents, and event damages. Use CAFM or approved maintenance systems to track work, report performance, and inform renewal priorities.
• Develop a Safe, Capable Team: Coach operational teams, foster accountability, and integrate health, safety, and environmental controls for activities that involve the public, heat exposure, machinery, chemicals, and working at height.

What You’ll Bring

• A bachelor’s degree in Horticulture, Landscape Management, Agriculture, Landscape Architecture, or a related discipline.
• At least 10 years of relevant landscape, horticulture, or parks operations and maintenance experience, with a minimum of 5 years in managing operational teams and service contracts.
• Demonstrated ability to deliver large-scale landscape and irrigation maintenance across parks, urban public realms, mixed-use developments, or destination environments; experience in hot, arid climates is essential.
• Proven experience in managing outsourced services, operational budgets, plant establishment, mobilization, and asset handover.
• Strong technical knowledge regarding arid-climate horticulture, plant health, soils, turf, tree care, irrigation, and water efficiency.
• Expertise in maintenance planning, asset-condition assessment, contractor performance management, commercial controls, and environmental risk management, supported by CAFM and reporting skills.
• Excellent communication, stakeholder coordination, and team leadership skills, with the ability to translate operational priorities into consistent service delivery.