Derren's switch from football to FM
Head of Health and Estates at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust's Oxford Road Campus
As a young man, Derren McCreadie was all set for a glittering football career. But a serious knee injury at the age of 16 saw him move into the world of facilities management.
A skilled central midfielder, Derren had already played numerous schoolboy internationals and had just signed a professional contract with Celtic’s youth team.
It seemed a matter of time before he would join the famous club’s first team and compete in the Scottish Premiership. He was also dreaming of representing his country at the highest level.
But at the age of 16, during the first half of a Scottish youth league semi-final against Motherwell, he went in for a tackle and came off badly, snapping his knee.
This ended Derren’s professional football career before it had a chance to start and, despite a year of therapy and physio, he was unable to get back on the pitch.
So Derren gave up his dream of becoming a professional footballer and became an apprentice electrician, before moving to work on healthcare PFI contracts.
He then became the technical services manager at the Royal Blackburn Hospital before moving to Dubai and Abu Dhabi. There, after a few years managing engineering projects, he headed up healthcare for another large facilities management company.
In 2019, the 49-year-old father of five moved back to the UK and was offered a job with Sodexo as the head of estates on the Central Manchester Oxford Road hospital campus. This suited him well as his wife is from North West England.
Derren, who grew up in Airdrie, North Lanarkshire, says: “In 2019, we decided to move back to the UK as our daughter was getting older, and I took work with Sodexo in the Central Manchester role. It was a great choice as Sodexo is a great employer.
Sodexo empower you to make your own choices based on your experience. There is no micro-management involved, which I really like. I also like working with the people at Sodexo as well.
“I think my managers would say I am a tough nut, probably because I am Glaswegian, but I know that my managers really appreciate my technical ability.
Derren’s teams look after the buildings and equipment that deliver all the engineering services at the hospitals such as ventilation and power. He has eight direct reports, and is responsible for 160 people over 100 buildings.
He says: “The skills vital to my job are understanding the needs of the patient and understanding how clinical people think. You really need to collaborate with clinical people closely as they understand how things will impact the patient and that is very important.
“I have a very good skill for risk management to identify the risk really quickly and trim it down so that a decision can be made as well as working with high level boards and being able to present to them in an easy to understand way.
“I have been in healthcare for 30 years. My way of life is to think about patient safety. It is not just a job for me. I like to think as a business we contribute to patient wellbeing and safety, that we are able to help people who – let’s face it when they come into our building – are already not in a good place.
“Technology is playing a bigger part, people will always be required, but technology to bring about early detection is becoming increasingly important and in my work this will continue.
“I would say to anyone starting out their career in a service like ours to get to know quickly the complexities of being a healthcare engineer. It’s all about patient safety in healthcare.
“I would recommend Sodexo as an employer. The way they are set up as a business, they give you the freedom to get on with the job. Sodexo is a really good employer. They bring people in who know what they are doing and let them go and do it – they trust their staff. That allows innovation.”
Derren lives with his wife and daughter Casey. He also has four grown up children aged between 23 and 30 years old.