Here we shine the spotlight on one of our experts, Derek Worthington.

Position at Assure:   Associate Director – Service Charge

Can you share more about your background and how it led you to Assure?

I qualified in Business Management and Purchasing and supply, specialising in contract law over thirty years ago and started off in finance and procurement.  I had an opportunity to move to Facilities Management took it and enjoyed it so much that I moved to an international insurance company managing their facilities and property. At this time I became a full member of BIFM (now the Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management) and moved into Service Charge Consultancy in 2002 following a run of undertaking short notice office refurbishments for a major client (I basically got fed up with living out of hotel rooms). In 2016 I was looking for a change when Lee Mason called and we discussed a role with Assure – I enjoy working in the professional but relaxed informal atmosphere of the business and do not see myself moving from here (that is if Lee will keep me of course).

Trivia: In 1994 I organised and managed a Public Local Inquiry into the variation of Dartmoor National Park Boundary – as a consequence my name is a matter of the public record.

What gets you most excited about coming to work?

The challenge of finding savings for clients.

And when you aren’t working,  what do you like to do in your spare time?

Assisting with a charity called flytohelp – giving families going through hard times a day out flying in light aircraft and getting teenagers interested in aviation. I also enjoy aviation and wildlife photography, travel (mainly Uk at the moment) and model railway engineering.

Favourite quote

Captain Moody to passengers on a Boeing 747 when all four engines failed:

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress.”

Your top 3 favourite Podcasts/Books?

• Podcasts: Cold War Conversations, The Atomic Hobo
• Books: Lord of the Rings, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Red Dawn Rising (I know it’s four not three, but I’m no good at following rules.)

Tell us something about you that most people don’t know?

As a teenager I could fly before I could drive, being an RAF G1 qualified Glider Pilot at the age of 17 and by the age of 18 I had completed the parachuting course at RAF Brize Norton and had an accident involving a dodgy parachute and 600 feet – it’s true what they say, it isn’t the falling, it’s the landing that hurts.

And one final question, list three items on your bucket list?

At 56 my bucket list has been mostly completed, but I’ve some good ones:

• Travel to Hawaii’s – completed twice, been to 13,800 feet to watch the stars and visited the world’s most active volcano – (trivia, my son and I can been seen in the background of a scene in episode three of the second series of the TV series Hawai’i Five-0 filmed in 2011)
• Played Rugby at the old Cardiff Arms Park and beat the Welsh
• Completed the Gibraltar Rock run (2.75 miles up 1,300 feet to the top of the Rock, no record’s broken but I did it)

Remaining ones to be done are visiting the Arctic, Iceland and Alaska and to see the Northern Lights.

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