Across the country, women are increasingly occupying key roles within the facility management sector operating critical assets, navigating risk and shaping the overall future of the built environment. This week, we profile Kristyn Gurdler, account lead for National Heavy Vehicle Regulator at Cushman & Wakefield.
What are the three pivotal moments in your career that led to you reaching your current role?
The first was beginning in the private sector as a facilities coordinator within a hospital setting. This role was a high-pressure environment that immersed me in trades, compliance and government contract delivery.
The second was expanding into the public sector across emergency services, property and project management. This period sparked my passion for structured project delivery and contracts.
The third was managing a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) contract. My big focus was contract deliverables within the short and long term, understanding the requirements for the delivery model.
What does leading facilities management at the national scale involve day-to-day, and what are some of the biggest challenges?
Maintaining open and effective communication with our client is a key responsibility. I’m the primary contact for all contractual matters. This means my focus is on ensuring compliance across all our sites and managing the contractual aspects surrounding our service deliverables and levels, while ensuring we perform at a profit.
Within my contract, the portfolio is diverse – over 260 sites with varying site types and purposes within metro, regional and remote settings.
For all of these sites, I oversee the delivery of a wide range of services, including facilities management, property management and compliance while managing our vendors under a pass-through model.
Some of the biggest challenges we face are building and maintaining stakeholder relationships while balancing the art of acting as a colleague and embedding ourselves as a one-approach with our client, while also navigating the contractual delivery model surrounding inclusions and exclusions of the service model.
What has your experience been working at this intersection of operations, regulation and stakeholder
management?
My experience across both public and private sector environments has taught me that compliance- and contract-led delivery require equal parts structure, clarity and strength within relationships.
Ensuring regulatory expectations are met in varying environments means translating complex requirements into practical and achievable outcomes. I’ve prioritised proactive communication, consistency and genuine partnership with stakeholders as they are essential to success.
The hustle, the grind and the struggle that no one will see. What have been the toughest moments for you when it comes to just staying the course?
The toughest challenges have been navigating the balance between work and career progression while ensuring my work doesn’t impact too much of my personal life. Learning to navigate corporate politics, remaining authentic, principled and
stakeholder-focused has required a lot of patience, resilience and clarity of purpose.
For the majority of my career, I’ve been based in a health and client delivery setting. I’ve always been driven by the understanding that the work we do impacts people (potentially on their hardest days) and carrying that awareness can be both motivating and emotionally heavy.
For women at the start of their careers within the facility management sector, what should they hear or is something you wish you had been told early on in your career?
If I could give one piece of advice, it would be to invest early in finding a great mentor and intentionally aligning yourself with a circle of like-minded women who inspire your ambition and mindset. Choose a mentor who genuinely values your potential, stretches your thinking and gives you the space to grow. Seek feedback openly, especially the constructive kind.
It’s also incredibly important not to let a male-dominated industry make you doubt your place in it. Confidence comes from
backing yourself and trusting your ability, even when you’re the only woman at the table.
When you start to question whether you belong, remind yourself that capability is built on consistency, integrity and the courage to speak when it matters. Your perspective, judgement and approach may differ from those around you, but that difference is exactly what the industry needs. Trust your decisions, your experience and your expertise.
This article first appeared in the March 2026 edition of FM magazine. To download the entire edition for free, click here.
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